Echo
by NayanRoo
Summary: What is real? When all reason is confused and all hope is lost, what does it take to regain it, and yourself? ItaNeji T for now, may go up in the future.
1. Prologue

A/N: This took a while, and it'll only keep going. Yay!

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, _Solaris,_ and I certainly do not own _Harry Potter._ They are the property of their respective owners or copyright holders. Not for profit, etc.

* * *

_"At the same time, there is something inside us which we don't like to face up to, from which we try to protect ourselves, but which nevertheless remains...We arrive here as we are in reality, and when the page is turned and that reality is revealed to us--that part of our reality which we would prefer to pass over in silence--then we don't like it anymore."_

_-_Stanislaw Lem, _Solaris_ (Dr. Snow)

--

_"Tell me one last thing," said Harry. "Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?"_

_ Dumbledore beamed at him, and his voice sounded loud and strong in Harry's ears even though the bright mist was descending again, obscuring his figure._

_"Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean it is not real?"_

_-_J.K. Rowling, _Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows_ (Harry and Dumbledore)

* * *

The predawn light gave an unnaturally bright tinge to the tiled roofs of the Hyuuga clanhouses. If he had known now, he would have noted this and known what it meant; but he was still in the nighttime of his life.

He padded through the covered walkway overlooking calm ponds and private gardens with stone-cobbled walkways. His eyes were not looking at these things of beauty however, these gardens carefully cultivated by generations of his high and mighty family. They weren't focused on anything as he walked through the huge central garden to the shrine in the middle of it. He had always found this place to be relaxing and centering, even today. It gave clarity to a mind clouded with lack of sleep and overwhelming grief.

He'd been told it was pointless to mourn the person he went today to honor. This man almost wrecked you, they said. This man would have been the downfall of all you worked to gain. Fresh with mourning, he'd whirled on them.

_I want no part of your stupid clan politics anymore,_ he'd screamed. _I will not do your bidding, nor will I be party to your blasphemous, incestuous thoughts. Find another suitor for her, or let her choose. Hinata-sama's judgment is sound, or do you not trust your new clan head?_

These thoughts echoed through his head as he entered the shrine and found the marker he wanted, tucked away in a side niche far removed from the best places. It was in a shadowy corner, a place where not many came to pay their respects. Pulling out three sticks of incense, he neatly put them in the sand tray below the marker and lit each one in turn, kneeling to pray when the sticks were sending their plumes of scented smoke into the darkness of the candle-lit shrine.

Prayer was supposed to be a kind of meditation, a way to clear minds and hearts of sorrow or sin or troubling thoughts. Praying for the souls of the departed ones that were beloved in life was supposed to be a way to free oneself from sorrow, to reflect on the goodness that person had brought into one's life, and be content with the good and forget the bad.

He snorted ruefully, and some of the grains of sand ruffled away from the forceful exhalation. Forgetting the bad, playing the good up to epic proportion; that was his clan's forte.

Praying for this man's soul didn't make him feel any of that. He felt more confused, angrier than ever. But he'd stopped fighting a long time ago. Better to just ignore it all than let everything take him over.

The sun was glowing into the shrine with a golden light when the messenger boy stepped lightly in. Looking around, clutching the summons scroll tightly in one sweaty hand, the boy found who he was looking for and walked over. "Neji-san, a summons from the Hokage."

The sticks of incense had almost burned down. Neji snuffed them out and took the scroll from the messenger, gave him a few coins as payment, and undid the seal as he walked back to his room. It was a first-class level seal, which mean the contents included secure information trusted only to the person it had been addressed to. It was likely a mission scroll then, and one of a high caliber at that. Sitting on a mat near the door to his room, Neji pulled open the scroll to read the contents.

--

Fifteen minutes later he was leaping through the rooftops of the government-administrative complex of Konoha. His expression was such that everyone who saw him or raised a hand in greeting quickly lowered their hands and eyes; shuddering as the Hyuuga's angry chakra whipped over them. Landing on the ledge outside the Hokage's office, Neji nodded briefly to the two guards standing at either side of the door—one he knew was Uchiha Sasuke, the other was likely to be another one of the former Rookie Nine.

Neji ignored them both and pushed the doors open with a bang, storming across the room to Tsunade's desk and slamming his palms down on the top.

Tsunade raised an eyebrow. Had the Hyuuga been putting chakra behind those palms, her desk would have shattered instantly. "Is there something wrong, Neji?"

"You know I don't do missions this far afield," he snapped. "You put the order on my record yourself."

"The only person qualified for this mission is you, Neji," Tsunade said. "There is no other option. Your uncle no longer does missions, you know that."

"Send Jiraiya, this is more his thing—"

"Jiraiya is out acting as an operative in former Sound," the Godaime replied. "I stand by my decision, you leave in two days." Her expression softened. "Neji, I know you haven't done any long-term or distance missions since that incident, but you need to stop moping and move on. Day after tomorrow, you leave, and when you get back, I want to see a happy shinobi under my command, rather than one with a long face."

"Things like these don't just go away," Neji muttered. "Do you know—"

"Yes, Neji," Tsunade said acidly. "As a matter of fact, I do. No arguing; my mind is made up on this."

Swallowing his arguments, Neji bowed. "I understand, Hokage-sama," he said with all the formality bred into his Hyuuga blood. "I will carry out this mission to the best of my ability."

Turning on his heel, he left the room, leapt from the ledge again, and took off again. He had packing to do.

--

Tsunade watched Neji's back as he stormed out of the office. Her healer's hands were aching to ease the knots from his shoulders, and to touch his soul and heal the hurt there, but she knew that even all her skill, all Sakura's skill, all the medic-nin in the world would be unable to save him. Only Neji had that power.

_The hands of a healer are the hands of a leader._

She snorted, and from the bottom drawer of her desk, she took a much-tattered and folded photograph. In sepia tones, it showed the three people she had loved, once.

--

It has been proven that we all react differently to grief and loss. Some people can shrug it off after a few months, even if their relationship with the deceased was very close. Some people go into destructive downward spirals. Some have no choice but to mourn quietly.

Neji could not shrug this off; and while he'd sunk down in depression, he was not able to let himself go entirely, prevented from it by pride and training. So for five years, the only person Hyuuga Neji had allowed to see his grief was himself. Not even Hinata could be trusted; she was a strong and capable leader, slowly growing in confidence, but she was still subject to the whim of the Elder Council.

He would later regard all this with the critical and slightly paranoid eye of someone who has seen things that people, normal human or shinobi, are not prepared for. For there are mysteries in the world that we cannot yet comprehend, and wonders yet to come that we will not understand.

--

Neji checked his backpack, making sure it was secured shut and the strap was snug across his chest. Turning, he kept his expression carefully neutral and bowed. "Thank you for helping provision me, Hinata-sama. I apologize for my absence in advance."

"It's all right, Neji-niisan," the Hyuuga clan head replied, smiling shyly. "The Hokage has been kind enough to lend me two of her own guard—"

"Hey, Hinata-chan!"

Neji turned and saw a bright blond head and a dark head. The male members of the most celebrated team since the legendary three were now Hinata's personal guard.

"We'll take good care of Hinata-chan while you're gone, Neji!" Naruto said. He was in high spirits, bubbly and excited about this new thing. "We'll protect her from everything, even the damn demons if they break out." He managed to keep his smile, even as the fox stirred slowly in his belly.

"Thank you, Naruto," Neji said, bowing. Feeling for the weight of the map in his pocket, he got a running start, shifted his chakra to his feet, and leapt up. It would be a week's journey, over the mountains to the north of Konoha and into largely unknown lands. Once he arrived at his destination he would meet up with a team of jounin who had been deployed a few months ago. Contact with them had dropped from daily communiqués to none at all, and while it was a remote village, some contact was expected of such seasoned shinobi. In the mission scroll, Tsunade had emphasized that this was to be a contact and possible retrieval mission, something easy just to get him out of the village.

Neji soured as he leapt up the hillside through the trees. Doing well on this mission (as he would because anything else would be personally unacceptable) would lead to more distance missions even farther from Konoha. And by now he was sure everyone knew where those got him. He had been limited to close-range missions after the incident, and after the first disastrous mission they'd sent him on following it. He had completely lost his cool, something he wasn't used to and didn't like, and had been hospitalized and under ANBU guard for weeks after. The Elder Council had not been amused, his uncle had _not_ been pleased, and Tsunade had noted the ban from distance missions on his official record. Now it seemed she was breaking that.

"_Don't interfere." The young man's eyes were haughty and glittered insanely, and not for the first time Neji wondered if Orochimaru's death were real, or if he lived on yet. "Hyuuga slut."_

"_You don't understand," he said, struggling. "You poor bastard, you don't understand still."_

--

He stopped at a waystation that night, a small building about thirty miles from Konoha's valley and ten miles out of Fire Country altogether. The bed was a straw mattress covered in none-too-luxurious blankets, but it was sufficient for his purposes, as functional as his movements and thoughts as he set about making a meal for himself.

_I've been lax_, Neji thought as he stretched aching muscles and ate his dinner. _Years of no traveling has made me soft._

Still, he couldn't blame the Konoha council for wanting to ban him from distance missions. If he hadn't put it on himself, they would have, along with any number of other restrictions on his movement. When he'd asked to be taken off distance entirely, he'd done so with the knowledge that a charge of fraternization with an enemy of Konoha and Fire Country carried a death sentence, and it was only with the intercession of the rest of the Rookie Nine that Neji had been spared.

His uncle had been livid. Ever since the practices of the Hyuuga clan had been revealed at that fateful Chuunin exam years ago, the entire clan had been under intense scrutiny by the Hokage and other clans in the city. Granted, even though none of them were the thread the Uchihas would have been (even they had had skeletons though, and the Hyuuga knew most of them), the loss of face annoyed Hyuuga Hiashi more than anything. And when it was revealed that Neji, the bright and shining star of the Hyuuga clan, had been having 'unnatural relations' with Uchiha Itachi in Hiashi's own house, he became almost unbearable. Not only had Neji been consorting with one of the village's most reviled criminals since Orochimaru, added to that was the insult of the Uchiha clan being descended from rogue Hyuuga, entering into cursed unions with other clans, superhuman beings, and even bijuu as some legends had it. The dishonor of it all was such that Neji knew Hiashi would have murdered him had he not been pardoned by the council and the Hokage. Hyuuga Hiashi was not a murderer.

_Pardoned under reasonable suspicion that the accused was under a genjutsu._ They couldn't deal with the idea that he had done everything of his own free will.

Grumbling stomach quieted and heavy heart carefully forgotten, Neji rolled himself into his bedroll and slept.

A week and a half later, he landed in a tree a mile from the town.


	2. Chapter 1:  Arrival

Chapter I: Arrival

Neji had seen many things; he was a shinobi, and he was used to strange jutsu with weird and terrible effects. But by all rights, he should not have felt the need to use a concealment jutsu, create bunshins, and survey the town from a mile away by use of the Byakugan. It was just a standard contact mission, after all, there was very little danger from enemy shinobi, and he was easily the most talented Hyuuga to come out of the clan since the Beginning. Neji was more than capable of defending himself from just about anything. And all the reports and correspondence between Tsunade and the team had been copied over and given to him to study before he reached the town, so he had had a chance to study up on the conditions prior to arrival.

But an inexplicable _dark_ feeling; lethargy, discontent, even outright anger, had come over him when he'd camped last night, within the official boundaries of the township. Neji would have continued on into the town that night, but he'd wanted an extra night to go over the more interesting and vague of the reports. More disturbing and unsettling than any strange feelings, anything he had read even, had been the signs of conflict around the area; splashes of blood on the ground and trees; scorch marks from exploding tags; and most disturbing of all, an upright post in the middle of a circle of still-smoking ashes. There were no bones, but Neji had no illusions about what had occurred there.

The question he kept coming back to was the _why_; why would the people of this town want to burn their own neighbors at the stake? Why had the team sent from Konoha that had obviously been present for this permitted it? The correspondence copies that had the most information about this were by now much creased and dog-eared from reading. In places, Neji had scribbled notes or thoughts. One line in particular had attracted his attention. It had been scribbled hastily as a postscript to a completely normal and rational report, and in a different handwriting:

_They come when we sleep, most of the time, like some kind of dream._

There was no indication of who 'they' were, no hints in the report, which by now Neji knew had covered for the existence of 'them.' It was purposefully vague and roundabout in answering the usual questions, written by someone practiced at covering up the truth.

…_The records of these proceedings shall be sealed until such time as all the parties involved have died and a period of fifty years thereafter has passed…_

Yes, shinobi were good at hiding the truth, he thought bitterly. Better than they should be. He turned his gaze back onto the town.

Through the black and white of the Byakugan, Neji surveyed the town and the surrounding area. Outside the walls, he could see more signs of struggle in the form of weaponry and burned earth; inside the town, he could see only the brightly glowing chakra systems of the team of Konoha-nin sent to stabilize the town. He could tell because the systems were distinct and developed, not atrophied from disuse. There were only three, he counted, instead of the four sent out.

Frowning, Neji descented into Toki, Byakugan activated still even though it drained his chakra too fast for his own comfort. In a deserted town like this one, though, anything could have taken up residence in the rotten and abandoned buildings. He kept one ear out for any sound other than his own strained breath. His footsteps were silent on the cobblestone streets, not making so much as a whisper as he entered the town. Using chakra to hasten his steps would have attracted too much attention, with his white robes.

Dropping into the city center, he glanced down a side street and saw, yards away, the lip of the cliff Toki sat on. At the foot of the cliff was a shelf above the level of the water, and all maritime activities had once taken place there. Toki sat on the edge of a gorge carved out over thousands of years.

The town of Toki had once been a major trading route, situated at the edge of a river on the way from Konoha and the eastern countries to the western sea. It linked the two sides of the continent, and short of sending goods with traveling shinobi (the most elite of whom would not deign to take the job and left it instead to the bumbling genin who more often than not dropped it down ravines), it was the fastest route to what was, to most people, the other side of the world. Very few people ever left the continent to see what lay beyond it, and very few people from the other parts of the world took any interest at all in what happened on the Shinobi Continent. They regarded its people as backwards-living freaks, without their own advanced technology, and it was with difficulty that they accepted the few shinobi who ventured past the borders of the Shinobi Continent. Most of the time they did not at all.

As inter-country trade became more and more common, the town of Toki grew in wealth and prestige. People flocked to live there, and it swelled past the humble sailors' huts that it had once been. At the zenith of its time, Toki boasted all but an attached Hidden Village, although it split its allegiance between Rock, the nearest but most warmongering Village; and Leaf, the one with prestige at least equal to their own. The First Hokage had established an outpost here, before the border wars began and he lost the land to the newly-formed Grass.

One night, a great storm covered the land. The inhabitants of Toki huddled in their homes, fearing for their lives. When the storm was reaching its climax of winds and rain and lightning, a great crash of thunder and the whole port shook and was swamped by a huge wave, the likes of which had never been seen before. When the storm passed, the people investigated up and down the river and found that a huge rockfall between the two cliffs of the gorge below the town had blocked the river's flow. Over the next fifty years, the valley below filled up and became a lake, submerging the original port. As trade dried up, so did the town, until the special properties of the lake were discovered.

Dropping into the city center, Neji encountered more telltale scorch marks, and even places where the stones of the streets themselves were overturned in great piles, surrounding rank, reeking holes. He remembered that Kiba was sent out on this mission as well; it was either him and his dog, or one of Kakashi's dogs. Neji wasn't familiar with the woman and the medic-nin who had gone on the team. Anko had been a proctor for his second chuunin exam; he very quickly remembered her story when he found the blasted and slashed carcass of one a snake-summon in one of the streets. It had been there some time; the flesh was beginning to decay and give off a terrible stench, and the great golden eyes were hazed in death. Shizune, the medic-nin, was Tsunade's assistant. This was one of the few missions she had taken in the year, just to keep in practice.

The house the Konoha-nin had been given was right off the main square. He crossed the empty grass of the plaza, shuddering to see it so deserted. That eerie silence, the absence of life where it ought to be, unsettled him even more. And most of all, it was the pervasive feeling of being watched, even though he hadn't seen one living thing since the day before.

Neji's knocks on the front door went unanswered and when he tried picking the lock, it broke his pick off. _A locking jutsu, then,_ he thought, taking a breath and bringing chakra to his palms. With a strike to the door, it shattered—and so did the heavy oak chest of drawers behind it. The chakra had sliced through it like a knife. Coughing, Neji scrambled over the splinters and got his bearings inside the house, creeping into the open formal room to get out of the cloud of dust he'd raised. All the blinds had been drawn; all that remained of the natural light that would have filled the room was a dim and lurid yellow glow. It irritated Neji for some reason, possibly because it temporarily confused his eyes. So it wasn't surprising that he didn't see the female form in the dusty armchair.

At first, it seemed she didn't see him either. She certainly hadn't reacted to the crashing; she remained in place, a faraway expression obscuring any thoughts she might be having. One hand rubbed insistently at a spot on her neck, like there was a knot of bunched muscle there. Neji recognized her from the profiles he'd been given to study on the trip here; Mitarashi Anko, special jounin and ANBU member, sat before him. Neji cleared his throat and she jumped, staring at him wide-eyed.

"Mitarashi-san," he began respectfully. "I am—"

"I don't know you," she said suddenly. "Why are you here?"

"I am Hyuuga N—"

"Hizashi?" Anko said suddenly. "Why would it send _him_?" she mused, half to herself. Seeming to come back to reality, she put her hands up to form a seal and Neji rapidly backpedaled, his Byakugan picking up the subtle glow of the chakra increasing in her hands. Her hands blurred and then there were snakes flying at him. He dropped, rolled across the floor and took cover behind another chair. Peering out, he spied a bottle by the chair Anko had been in.

_Has she been drinking?_

"I don't know why it sent you," Anko was saying as she brought up more chakra—she was dangerously low already, but the alcohol had dulled her senses and she wasn't aware. "But I'm going to end you like I ended all the others."

"Anko-san, it's me, Hyuuga Neji," he said desperately, darting back as she tossed the chair out of the way like it was nothing but a toy. Pushing chakra to his hands again, ready to attack, Neji straightened so she could see him. "Tsunade-sama sent me from Konoha." He couldn't understand why she was so scared, what could have unsettled a battle-hardened veteran like Anko so much that she would attack someone obviously from her own village. "I am a friend." He pointed to his hitae-ate. "See, Mitarashi-san? I think you've had enough to drink…"

She was staring at him now. "You're worried," she breathed. "You worry. So it's come up with some new way to torment us, oh, that's rich—"

"Where is Kakashi-san?"

"You want Kakashi now?" Anko doubled over with insane laughter. "Poor Kakashi! Don't you _know_, though?"

"How can I know?" Neji shouted at her, temper flaring up. "I've only just arrived!"

Anko paused at that. "From Konoha?"

"Yes! Mitarashi-san!"

She looked confused a moment, then her brow cleared and she smiled. "Hyuuga Neji, right?"

"Not that anyone would ever guess I am a Hyuuga," Neji said waspishly.

"Yeah, well, things have been a little…strange…around here. Had to take precautions, yannow."

"I must speak with Kakashi," Neji insisted, putting out a hand. She flinched away from it, and looked up at him. "Is he here? Is he out on patrol?"

"No, and no. He won't be doing either of those again…"

Neji caught on fast. "An accident?"

"Yesterday morning."

"Tell me what happened. I have to make a report to Tsunade—"

"No!" Anko looked almost terrified. "Or if you do, just tell her we're all peachy keen and there's nothing wrong—"

"No communication for a month and everything's fine?" Neji smirked. "If she buys that I've got a bridge to sell her…"

"You know how she is, half-drunk all the time—"

"You are too, Mitarashi-san. You should go sleep."

It was startling how fast her demeanor changed. One moment she was laughing with him and the next she was snarling, her eyes snapping burgundy sparks across the room. "What do you think you're doing?" she snapped. "Are you trying to pull something? Are you really one of them?"

Neji was too taken aback to reply at first. "No, Mitarashi-san, I merely suggested rest."

She slowly relaxed, but her eyes were wary. "I'm de facto leader," she said. "Shizune spends most of her time in the laboratory on the second floor, she's locked it up tight and rarely comes out…Kiba is out and about near the pier…and if you see anyone else, you'll know…"

"I'll know what, Mitarashi-san?" Neji was getting tired of these vague answers.

"You think I'm insane," she said, laughing softly again. "You think I've lost it, that the old bastard's finally worked his way in. Well, I haven't and he hasn't, not just yet…not yet…"

"Who would I meet?" he pressed on.

"It depends on you. Go on, and if you see anyone else…you'll know. Bedrooms are toward the back of the house, past the kitchen. Meet me back down here in an hour."

And with that she vanished.

Neji walked with a purpose as always, his head held high and his steps relaxed as he made his way through the large house. It had once been a beautiful place, he thought; through open doors, he could see gardens gone to seed and a fountain, full of green algae, listlessly spouting turgid water.

The bedrooms, past the kitchen and the dining room (the heavy wooden table he glimpsed was covered in scrolls and various papers), all had tags attached to them. _Hatake Kakashi; Mitarashi Anko, Shizune, Inuzuka Kiba._ The fifth was blank.

He reached out and took the knob in his hand. There came an inexplicable feeling of someone watching him, a tingle on his spine that had his Byakugan activated once more. But the feeling was gone as fleetingly as it had registered, and he saw nobody in the room. Turning the knob, he pushed the door open, closed it, and after a moment's thought bolted it shut. As he began to strip off the white robes he wore, Neji was gripped by a feeling that he would be left defenseless, bare to whatever unseen force prowled the streets of this town. Peeling his shoes off first, he made sure the door was secure and in a rare bout of paranoia, blocked it with a dresser, and only then did he remove his clothing. And then a sudden madness came over him, and he flew across the room toward the bathroom. Turning on the water full blast, he jumped under the scalding spray and gasped, the needle-sharp jets sending calm and control back into his body.

First priority: ascertain what had happened to Kakashi. That would be the first thing he put in his report to Tsunade, about the conditions he found the team and the town in. The second would be to interview each team member about the events, and mark any differences, which there would be; rarely did any two eyewitness accounts coincide. He would get four different stories, but the gist of the incident would be there. He also had to perform a test upon each remaining member, and if necessary, take them along when he returned to Konoha. He was to be in the field, truly doing mission work, for a week only.

Running his hands through soaked, coffee-brown hair, Neji sighed, using a bottle already in the shower to suds up and work the shampoo into his scalp. He would be more composed after his shower, and things would make so much more sense. There would be no scares from half-drunk jounin, no dead jounin. Everything would be normal.

Normal…no, it wouldn't be. Not without him, no matter how hard he tried.

Leaning his head against the tile, Neji felt an old familiar wound come to mind. His all-seeing eyes saw the skin around the scabby hurt was red and irritated, but still Neji's mental hands went forward, fingernails curled to pick and pull at the scab and make it bleed freshly.

_It's been years, Neji. It is time you move on._

Grinding his teeth, Neji's hand on the tile curled into a fist. The damn Elders, with their plots of intrigue and inbreeding. They wanted to keep it in the family, and they were worried that because of his…preferences, he would not produce any talented Hyuuga children that could possibly be adopted 'for the greater good' into the main house. They wanted to breed him like a prize stallion, as though he was something to pamper and gloss up. They forgot that the horse was capable of breaking through walls with the tap of a hoof.

Although, they were Hyuuga too. They knew the power of a gentle touch.

_How long has it been?_ He wondered. _Five…six years._ He swallowed, and the mental hands dug a little harder, a little deeper into the scab. A shot of pain jolted through his body. It bled.

_There's a harvest festival tonight. The fireworks will close it at midnight. Will you stay with me?_

A pleading, pale hand, one only displayed to him. Neji had never before let down his walls, but with this man each and every one of them had been breached.

_I will stay with you._

_Careful. That sounds like a promise._

_It was one,_ Neji thought. _Although it wouldn't have been the first promise he'd broken._

_For the outstanding crimes of murder—_

_No, you're all—_

_--and of manipulation under genjutsu of a Konoha jounin, we hereby sentence you to death, unanimously agreed upon by the council._

Neji pounded his fist into the tile so hard that one cracked. It bled a little, and he cursed, washed the last of the shampoo from his hair, and wrapped a towel around his waist as he got out of the shower. Examining his knuckle, he went to his backpack and pulled out a little medic kit, spreading an ointment on it that was supposed to aid in healing. Leaving the wound open to the air, ignoring the slight sting as the ointment began its work, Neji dressed again in cleaner, functional clothes. Checking the clock on the wall, he saw he still had forty-five minutes until he was to meet Anko, and finally was able to take a look around his room.

It was purely functional, and had the appearance of having been recently torn apart and put back together and tidied hastily, as though someone had been trying to hide their mess; some of the instruments that had been included in initial shipments of supplies to the team were stored here. Opening a tray, Neji raised an eyebrow; all the instruments, the medical tools, were destroyed. Even the porcelain handles had been melted, and not even an Uchiha's powerful Katon jutsu could manage that.

There was a bed on one side, near the windows where the shutters were open enough to let in the golden light, a table and chairs, and a bookshelf overflowing with books that, upon closer inspection, were all histories of the town of Toki, the lake, and the surrounding area, and pulled a chair over to sit. Pulling down one of the volumes, he read the cover—_Shinobi and the Lake of Opportunity_—and began to read.

The work was by a Mist shinobi by the name of Kana Kaida, some years earlier. Thumbing through the contents, Neji opened to the section on the history of the interest in Toki, and began to read.

The first sign that the remaining inhabitants of Toki had that the lake was more than they thought it was, was that the tides, the ebb and flow of nature as controlled by the moon, did not occur. Many people, specialists in the motions of the waters, were called in to examine this phenomenon; none could come up with an explanation. According to every calculation, the lake ought to follow a specific pattern of ebb and flux, but it defied all this, instead surging forward and receding back almost to the level of the previous port on the lake as it saw fit.

Naturally, this caused quite a stir. People were drawn to the lake, some bottling its water and claiming it to have restorative powers, some bathing in it to 'experience enlightenment,' some coming for purely scientific reasons. At that time, the villages were just beginning to have their first few classes of Academy students go out into the field; the town of Toki once more swelled as these new teams came and stayed for a few weeks to a few months to make their own examinations. Theories about the nature of the lake were widespread, covering everything from it being a sentient being in and of itself, despite having no membrane-bound organs or even a nervous center to speak of. Theories that it was a giant prokaryotic cell were loudly dismissed, although a school of thought still existed to this day.

Almost immediately the area of Tokiean studies split into factions; one based on the idea that a lake was just a lake; and the other on the idea that the lake had a consciousness of its own. Fights broke out, slanderous words were thrown, and the two official schools of thought began.

Eventually though, it was discovered that the lake reacted to various stimuli it was presented with in ways inconsistent with either line of thought. No two reactions were alike; sometimes the lake responded by swamping the boat with a freak wave, other times it did nothing. It showed no pattern in the position of where different reactions were more likely, no homologous interactions, nothing. The lake was both sentient and not; it was both water and at the same time it was something more.

All that occurred before Neji was born, however. By the time he was born, it had been proven over and over that the lake was merely water, albeit water with properties nobody had ever seen before. It was forbidden to drink or swim in the lake, or boat on it, as nobody knew what it was really. Hydrogen and oxygen had no hold over this place.

As the main source of trade was now off-limits, the town slowly became a ghost town. Until Konoha had sent a team in, investigating the disappearance of a trader caravan in the area; they'd last been seen watering their beasts and horses at the river above the lake. The trader was prominent in Konoha, and his loss would be keenly felt. Against better judgment, the team had been using Toki as a base of operations. After the trader had turned up under an assumed name, hiding from debtors, the team had stayed on to conduct by-now routine research on the lake. Every so often interest was taken in it again, and apparently the lake had been reported to have exhibited some of its more interesting habits.

Neji finished leafing through this and set it on the bookshelf again, pulling out maps from a case instead and setting them out on a small table nearby. Topographical, geopolitical, geographical. He pored over them all, until again he felt that tingle up and down his spine, the feeling that brought his head up. Scanning the room, even moving to check the bathroom, he found nobody however.

_What's wrong with me?_ He wondered, straightening his clothes and tying his hair back in a ponytail. _I'm on edge because of the words of a drunk woman? Neji, you're losing your touch._

It was time to go meet with Anko, anyway, and after first checking up and down the hallway he set out for the front of the house but paused outside Kakashi's door. After a moment's consideration, he turned the knob and went inside.

No personal touches save a picture frame. It was laying face-down on the ground, and when Neji picked it up the glass fell out in pieces. There was no photo in it, but there was a folded bit of scroll-paper. Neji pocketed this, and sifted through the rest of the things. The room was in disarray, the closet open and its contents torn apart. Looking through the papers, Neji discovered some of them were regarding some kind of experiment the team had been planning to perform on the ocean some weeks prior, while they were still in regular communication with Tsunade. Looking over the plans, he bet that they hadn't been approved by the Hokage.

Suddenly, he snapped his head around. Footsteps, coming up the hallway? Lightly moving next to the door, he watched the knob carefully, listening. The footsteps stopped outside his door, and he saw the glint as the light (golden, from the fantastic sunset) changed when the person or thing outside began to turn the knob. Without thinking Neji grabbed the handle, using a simple locking jutsu on it. The pressure on the knob did not go away, but it did not increase either, and after a second it did release and he heard footsteps going away down the corridor.

"Aw comon Hinata-chan. Don't look so sad! Neji'll be back!"

Hinata smiled at her exuberant guard. Naruto had always been a little ball of sunshine even in ANBU gear; he always had a smile on his face, and while he'd forgone the distinct uniform of the Leaf's covert operations unit, he wore the black, blue, and green of the jounin.

"He's tough, Neji. I remember when we fought in the chuunin exams, the year that Orochimaru invaded—remember?—Hey, Sasuke, where you going?"

For Sasuke had slammed his hand on the table, making their cups of coffee and plate of dango (which he hadn't touched) jump up in the air, and stomped off. Naruto frowned, but smiled just as quickly as she could register he'd made a face. "Anyway, you remember that, Hinata-chan? He carried all that anger for so long. How's he been since—you know?"

"Quiet," she replied. "He's been very quiet."

Outside, Sasuke leaned against the wall of the building, in the alley that separated it and the next building. His heart was pounding, his breath short.

_He doesn't have any hold over you any more,_ Sasuke told himself firmly. _You killed him yourself. You saw the life leave those damned monstrous eyes and subdued his mind in your own._

_Ah,_ said a nasty little voice inside Sasuke's head. _But you always doubted that Tsunade had sealed him away entirely. And doubt weakens seals as surely as acid erodes marble._

Trying to catch his breath, Sasuke gripped the seal on his shoulder. It would be a long afternoon.


	3. Chapter 2: The Visitors

Chapter II: The Visitors

A/N: chapters will come more slowly as I am back at school and getting my butt kicked by physics. I haven't forgotten about here, just haven't got the same time I did during the summer. :)

* * *

Shoving some of the notes he'd found on the floor into a pocket, Neji stooped to pick up a little card that was partially tucked under a stack of books. In Kakashi's strangely neat hand, it said:

_The Little Aprocrypha, Yume K._

Slipping that into the pocket with the notes, Neji combed the room again and found a jutsu-recorder tucked up inside the closet, which was flung open as though someone had burst forth out of it. It was a device with a jutsu on it that, when activated, recorded everything said in the room. Tucking this into another pocket, Neji looked around the room furtively before opening the door and going out into the hallway, lit through the windows by that same lurid golden glow.

As he turned a corner, Neji suddenly stopped, and pressed back against the wall behind him, because coming toward him was a tall, pale, dark-haired man. Orange goggles dangled around his neck, and a Leaf hitae-ate was tied around his forehead, pushing his spiky black hair up out of his eyes. There was a scar running over one eye, closed and useless. The other eye was the dark blue-black that he'd grown to know so very well.

_This man is an Uchiha,_ Neji thought, as he tried to melt into the wall—although it appeared that the man was paying him no heed at all. _But the roster listed no Uchiha—it couldn't, anyway, there's only--_ he stopped, swallowing hard.

_Whoever this man is, he's already dead._

The Uchiha's shoes made no sound on the floor as he walked, head held high and back straight, weight balanced forward. A true shinobi then, as expected of an Uchiha. He kept coming toward Neji, and then turned toward the bedrooms. Wide-eyed, Neji watched as he walked to Kakashi's room and opened the door. For a moment he seemed limned in golden light, as he walked into the room and shut the door.

Neji remained frozen for a few minutes, heart pounding in his chest. He wasn't familiar with the Uchiha clan, beyond knowing they were very distantly related to the Hyuuga clan, and that Itachi had murdered them all. Either way, as he calmed his shaking while he walked back to meet up with Anko, it most certainly had _not_ been a ghost, because Hyuuga Neji simply did not believe in ghosts.

The Hyuuga were very spiritual, highly superstitious—as evidenced by their extensive catacombs under the compound and their elaborate ceremonies on high feast days. Their earliest ancestors attributed their abilities to a divine birthright and even as science evolved and pulled apart the cytosines, thymines, guanines, and adenines that caused the Byakugan, and could even pinpoint certain areas that told when the Hyuuga line had developed and branched off from the rest of the shinobi race, the clan remained attached to its rituals. Neji hated it; the rituals were designed to flaunt the perfection of the main family and used to justify the subjugation of the branch family, something that had angered him for many years. Naruto's influence had mellowed it some after the invasion of Konoha, as had Hinata's succession to the head of the family, but it still aggravated him every year. He was made to wear more demure robes and avert his eyes on these days. Nevertheless, all this ritual had seeped into his mind, and he was thoroughly of the belief that ghosts simply did not exist.

_But what other explanation is there?_ He wondered, and fingered the recording in his pocket. _Perhaps this will have answers. I shall have to listen to it tonight._

Stepping over the pile of debris from the door, Neji found Anko sitting in the same chair she had been when he'd arrived, hungrily devouring prepared field rations. She looked haggard, tanned skin paler than he remembered and stretched taut over her cheekbones. "Hungry?" she asked, looking up at him. "Have a seat."

Neji sat but didn't grab a field ration; the experience in the hallway had thoroughly unsettled him to the point of wondering if he could be able to keep food down at all. But he didn't let this on, preferring to sit and observe Anko, and think.

Perhaps he'd had it wrong, and that man wasn't an Uchiha; who, then, was he? He had certainly resembled every Uchiha Neji had known of or met. Who else could he be?

"Shizune is still in the lab, correct?" he asked. "I would like to ask her a few questions before taking a look around myself." Pulling off the light sweater he wore over his mesh armor, Neji pulled his hair back and tied it up; why was it so hot in here? He was sweating, but outside the sky was overcast.

"She is, and it's useless to try and talk to her because she won't come out for anything." Anko pushed some sticky rice around the little metal tray. "She is…otherwise occupied." Watching Neji, she asked, "What's wrong? You're pouring with sweat.

"It's hot in here," Neji mumbled, wondering if he should take off the mesh as well but deciding against it. He had felt naked enough taking his clothes off before for the shower, doing it again in a much more exposed place did not appeal to him. And since he was this jittery, having that extra protection would be a comfort…

"You saw someone, didn't you?"

Neji stopped, stared at her. "How did you know?"

"You have that same look the rest of us did after the first one came," she said. "That same look that says you're wondering if this a dream or not, or if you're crazy or not—but if you're crazy, you've been that way for a long time. You know what they say about geniuses…well, you'd know better than most, wouldn't you?" A lewd, snakelike smile curled across Anko's lips, and Neji was suddenly very uncomfortable again. "After all…"

"I don't want to talk about it," Neji snapped. "Those files are sealed."

Anko pushed up her sleeve. "ANBU, special jounin. I have access, should you ever become a threat to the security of the great and praised village of the Leaf. But," and she took another jab at the rice with her chopsticks, "S'not important here. You saw someone; who was it?"

"An Uchiha, I think. _Not_ who you think," Neji said, cutting Anko off before she could crow something triumphant. She shrugged.

"They usually arrive when you're asleep, anyway," she mumbled, and made a 'go on' gesture with her chopsticks.

"Short black hair, one eye…"

"Oh, Kakashi's, then—Obito, I think his name was," Anko said. "Where did he go?"

"Into Kakashi's room. But he's not there anymore."

"No, he's not. We found him huddled in the closet, dead—he'd taken one of the panic pills." They shuddered together; the panic pills caused violent and painful deaths and were only to be used in the case of absolute emergency and utter loss of hope of rescue when in enemy territory.

"That's not like Kakashi-san, though," Neji said. "He would never have—"

"You don't understand," Anko said, laughing hollowly. "Here, anything is possible."

Neji thought of how he had looked around in the closet, and shuddered. "You found him this morning, you said?"

"Yes, his heart was still beating."

"And you didn't try resuscitation?"

"Shizune was locked in her lab already."

"Anko-san, we are all trained in methods of resuscitation—"

"Is this a fucking enquiry?" Anko shouted, and the look in her eye was enough for Neji to stop and back down. "You have no idea what's been going on here, so don't even try to understand us! Not until you've seen it too!" There was a moment of silence. Anko sat back down, and Neji cleared his throat. She continued, "Kakashi's body has been put in an impromptu cold storage in the basement until the effects of the panic pill are concluded. Once they are, we will burn his remains, as per regulations. I've drafted a post-mortem report you can send off to the Hokage with your contact report." She handed him a scroll, and Neji unrolled it, reading the characters easily.

"Suicide?"

"Yes, for various reasons. Depression…"

"He took a panic pill. That indicates either a severe threat on the integrity of the mission with far-reaching effects to the Leaf country, or he was paranoid, or he was—"

"Insane? You can't say that one anymore, Neji. You would have to take the pill yourself."

"The Hokage won't make that assumption. So why not just write the truth?"

"Do you think we would be believed?"

"No, but—"

"What's the point in trying? What can knowledge of these events do? Anko laughed hollowly. "But you're too young to think of that. Maybe another time yet."

"I want to speak to Shizune."

"You don't be able to get her to come out."

"Where did Uchiha Obito come from?"

"I don't know."

Neji snorted and turned on his heel, marching out of the room. Behind him, Anko said, "Don't you believe me? I don't know!" Her voice was wheedling, trying to get him to stop and listen, but he kept going right out the door.

Mulling things over on his way to the upstairs laboratory, Neji took a left after climbing the stairs and found a library, organized by author. The scrolls had been brought along by the team and were all on Tokiean studies, or some aspect of the local flora and fauna. Checking the appropriate spot, he found that _The Little Apocrypha_ by Yume was missing from its spot. The table in the middle of the room was strewn with papers, just like every other surface in the house, and Neji rifled through these as well. He came across what looked like notes for a n experiment, blasting chakra at the lake, and read it over with a furrowed brow. What effect would chakra have on water except to manipulate it? Unless the water had chakra in it already, which was absurd, because there was no chakra in the waters of Toki. Hoping to find some kind of clue, he pulled over a volume of history of the lake and opened it.

The first research expedition to the lake had been made of a consortium of the most powerful hidden villages; two from Leaf, two from Sand, one from Waterfall, one from Rain, one from Mist, one from Grass, one from Rock. Aside from some troubles when the team had gone out onto the lake—their communication equipment had failed earlier that morning, and after reports that one of the boats had capsized, a thick fog descended on the entire area and the search had to be called off. The boat and one of the two nin that had been in it drifted back later that afternoon, the occupant shaking and incoherent.

He was Yume Kakyou, from Mist, and there was absolutely no reason why he would be so scared of fog. Mist-nin controlled it, lived in it, were one with it. But he had been terrified. But when he'd been pulled from the boat after it had washed up on shore, he'd run around like a madman, babbling, and it had taken a judicious application of medical ninjutsu to keep him calm enough and knock him out. He slept for three days and was calm and composed upon awakening, but when he was returned to Mist he was kept under watch for fear he would hurt himself.

More than a little disturbed, Neji put the volume away and went out of the library, going back the opposite direction toward a tightly shut door. When he tried it, it was locked. "Shizune-san?" he called. There was no answer.

"Shizune-san, it is Hyuuga Neji." He heard rustling from inside, as though someone was pulling on clothes hastily or like someone was being tucked in to bed. "Shizune-san, are you going to open this door, yes or no?"

More of the rustling, and then a clatter of metal against metal, like instruments hastily being shoved away. Growing more annoyed every minute, Neji shouted, "Shizune-san, I have broken an explicitly stated rule on my record and traveled a week out of Fire Country to be here! I will break down this door if I need to—you know my abilities as a Hyuuga!"

A last burst of the rustling, and then a thin voice called out, "What do you want?" It was too high and shrill to come from Shizune, he was sure.

"I want to talk!" Neji shouted.

A moment later, Shizune appeared against the door and leaned against it. Her hair was in disarray, as were her clothes; it looked like she'd hastily pulled on the blue robe she was wearing, because it was rumpled and the obi was too loose. "Hurry up," she snapped.

Neji was taken aback; this was nothing like the Shizune he was familiar with. "I'd like to know about Kakashi-san's death," he said, much more meek than he'd planned to be.

"You probably got it from Anko," she said. "Why are you bothering me?"

"Were you the one to find her?"

"Read her report."

"What is Kiba's position and the call number for his radio? I'd like to call him back into talk to him."

"Neji, you're well-intentioned, but you're harassing a senior shinobi. I'll have to file a—"

"—Complaint?" Neji snapped. "Who are you going to complain to? Have you gone mad?" He kept going, railing against the older woman for who know how long, venting his frustrations on her. She remained still, surprisingly, pressed back against the door. When he paused for breath, he realized she was pouring with sweat.

"Go away, please, just go," she moaned, and Neji suddenly noticed the door was rattling, shuddering as though it was being struck by some immensely strong force.

"What's going on?" Neji demanded.

"I'll tell you later—please just go!" And with that she disappeared, just as the door was shoved open. Neji leapt back and looked up just in time to see a bright glint, as though off of glass. Then the door slammed shut, and he heard the terrifying sound of a man's laugh.

Mind reeling, Neji fled back to the library and its comforting ambiance, running to the back of the room where all the expedition's equipment was stored. Rummaging through the desk it was laid out on, he pulled out several pieces of paper.

An adult shinobi's chakra system pulsed at a rate that was contingent on clan, sex, age, and weight. Pulling out a slim volume, Neji looked up the rate of pulses for a Hyuuga male, and got to work. He ignored the pulse sensor on the desk. If he were mad, hallucinating, or dreaming, the numbers would not correlate when he let the sensor measure his chakra pulse. For almost an hour he worked the equations, taking his time. Not since he'd tested for jounin had he done mathematics this complex.

Finally, trembling, he pressed his palm against the sensor of the device, letting it feel his chakra system. The sensor beeped, and the reading popped up.

As he'd dreaded, they were exactly the same. He was not mad, or hallucinating. With that last refuge's hope extinguished, Neji went back downstairs, pushing hair out of his eyes in a tired, sad way.

_Just where am I?_ he wondered. Going back to his room, he hesitated before he simply turned the lock. There wasn't any point in barricading the door. Stripping down, he crawled into the bed and was asleep the moment his head hit the pillow.

* * *

Hinata shivered, and Sasuke automatically tensed beside her. It was a posh assignment, guarding someone who could kill with a touch. But over the week since Neji had been gone, their job had been more as confidantes than guardians. And to that end, Sasuke though, Naruto was far superior. 

Even now, he leaned over and whispered to Hinata as the Elder kept talking. She smiled and sat up straighter, and Naruto smiled too. Perhaps it was better that it was the blond as well. Given Neji's history, Sasuke could be trusted to remain neutral. Of course, Sasuke's most impressionable years had been spent in the company of a man almost everyone saw as a monster, including Hinata. Her compassionate streak did _not_ extend to Orochimaru.

When the meeting concluded, Sasuke hung back and glared round at the Elders as they left the room. They weren't pleased, to have one of the cursed bloodline in the walls of their home. That was why, when Neji had been caught, they had been so livid.

Catching up with Naruto and Hinata, he found them laughing together. "Shut up," he grumbled, rubbing at his seal. "How you got into ANBU—"

"Same way you did!" Naruto grinned, and Hinata flushed a pretty pink about her steel-grey kimono.

"It is nearly the third hour after noon," she said softly. "Would you two like some tea?"

"You and Naruto go on," Sasuke said. "I'll go patrol." He leaped off before they could protest.

Being among the harsh, traditionalist Hyuuga reminded him painfully of his years in Sound, and again his mind bent to Orochimaru. Even all these years later, even with the old snake all but dead and all his followers murdered, Sasuke's skin still crawled at the thought of them, pale hands (_doctor's hands_) on his skin and gold eyes (_black eyes_) watching him so carefully.

The seal throbbed slowly, and in the very darkest recesses of his mind, Sasuke thought he felt the snake stir. Holding very still, he closed his eyes and focused on keeping the barriers up, mental walls of stone and seal and chakra. And slowly, slowly, he relaxed, letting his breath out in a sigh past pink lips. Sometimes he envied Naruto for being able to almost commune with the fox. They were one more than he and the entity that lived within his head would ever be one.

That night, as Naruto was preparing to take the night watch, Sasuke said, "You should ask her hand. She's clan head now, she doesn't have anyone but the Elders to answer to and she can easily sway them."

"Nah. She doesn—"

"Naruto, if you say she doesn't like you, then you're more idiotic than I thought." Sasuke took off his shoes, set a kunai under his pillow and his sword by the side of the futon, and went to sleep before Naruto could protest.


	4. Chapter 3:  Itachi

Chapter III: Itachi

A hand was stroking his chest gently. It was familiar and soothing, and even though Neji had the impression of only having slept for a few minutes, he felt oddly awake. The hand smoothed over his abdomen, and Neji made a little noise and arched into it. Something cold pressed against his belly—a ring, on one of the fingers. The person was using their right hand, and there was a ring on the hand's ring finger.

Slowly opening his eyes, Neji saw the first few golden rays of light from the sun breaking through the curtains dimly; it was still enough to backlight Itachi though, sitting on the edge of the bed. He was wearing the Akatsuki coat he had worn so many times when he'd met Neji, the collar pulled up to obscure half his face. But Neji could tell the other was smiling; it showed in a certain light in his whole face. Itachi had deactivated the Sharingan, and the light pooled in eyes such a dark blue they were black. His hand was still moving over Neji's skin, and as he brushed his fingers over a certain spot Neji gasped softly. The other's look of smiling intensified.

Neji closed his eyes, wondering what kind of dream he'd been given this time. Usually it was the nightmare about that day, or erotic, half-formed things between fantasy and memory. But when he opened his eyes again, Itachi was still there. He'd pulled the collar of the coat down so it was wrinkled up under his chin, and his full lips were pouting slightly. It was an unconscious habit, but one that was undeniably _Itachi_.

"Have you come to visit me?" Neji murmured.

His own voice frightened him; it made the whole thing so much more real. Looking around, Neji wondered if he'd really dropped all his clothes and things in the places they were in now, and resolved to check when he'd woken up.

"How long will you be here?" he asked.

The sun must have risen by now, and Neji knew it was a dream. He had gone to sleep in the late afternoon; there was no way he'd slept through an entire night, he never did anymore, so it must be a dream. Laying there, enjoying Itachi's simple caress, Neji wondered why he did not wake up. Screwing his eyes tightly shut, he tried to go back to sleep.

There was a shifting, rustling noise, and Neji opened his eyes again. Itachi was leaning over him, long hair freed of its ponytail and hanging down around their faces. Reaching up, Neji traced the strange scars on Itachi's face, and kissed him. It was a short, shy kiss at first, thought and memory making him awkward, but their kisses never stayed that way for very long. Soon, he pulled Itachi on top of him, whimpering a little as he put his arms up around the other's shoulders. It was rare he had a good dream of them together, one so clear and sharp, and he wanted to savor it. His heart ached secretly for Itachi, an ache that slowly moved downward as Itachi's tongue stroked his and his hands wove into Neji's long hair, the tips massaging gently at his scalp just as he liked it.

Neji's entire body buzzed with pleasure (remembered pleasure? He wondered.) as they lay together, Itachi moving so surely and paying such diligent attention to every place that made his breath hitch in his throat. But even as evidence of his arousal became clear, even as he began to crave more, a glimmer of thought crossed his mind. Putting out a hand, Neji pushed the Uchiha off him and back, so he could sit up.

"What do you want?" he asked breathily, damning his body for betraying him so easily. Everything in him screamed to continue; for six damn years, he'd wanted something he couldn't have, and now that it was within his reach he denied it to himself. Swinging his legs over the side of the bed he looked away, because the hurt expression on Itachi's face made his heart ache again.

_Good thing he never made that face when he was alive,_ Neji thought. But then it occurred to him; Itachi _never had…_of course, it was just a dream, so it didn't have to obey the rules.

Neji pinched himself hard. _Surely that'll wake me up_, he thought, but the dream continued. Itachi was leaning against the wall, staring at him with a sort of wistful look combined with quiet interest.

"Where have you come from?"

Itachi said nothing, but reached up and traced the lines of the Caged Bird seal. Neji shivered, with both sensation and a growing unease; although if this were a dream, all Itachi's mannerisms when they were in bed together would be preserved…right?

"I don't know," he replied easily, confidence ringing in his voice. Something in Neji thrilled to hear that rich tenor he'd so dearly missed.

"Were you seen?"

"I…I don't know," Itachi said, his brow furrowing slightly. It wasn't a natural look for Itachi, and that warm feeling from hearing the other's voice began to dissipate slightly. "Neji, what's wrong?" His fingers were still tracing Neji's seal, but they had faltered slightly.

"Itachi."

"Yes, my love?"

Neji scowled. That was _definitely_ not something Itachi would have said. They had _never_ had pet names for each other, preferring the sound of each other's names falling from kiss-reddened lips…he shivered and smiled. "How'd you find me?"

Itachi shrugged and leaned in, nuzzling against the Hyuuga's neck in a show of affection so needed and so repulsive to Neji that he froze before he responded, stroking Itachi's hair. "I don't know," Itachi said. "I just wandered around this house until I found you. I didn't want to wake you up though. You're beautiful when you sleep." He sat back Indian-style on the bed and stretched, yawning. With his hair falling over one shoulder, the ends touched by gold light, he was more beautiful than anything Neji had ever imagined. But there was something…

Scooting over, he placed himself in Itachi's lap, leaning his head against the Uchiha's shoulder. Automatically Itachi's arms were around him and he was being kissed and nuzzled, and for a moment he forgot about what he wanted to find and lost himself in the touches. But he managed to keep himself together, and tugged down the collar of Itachi's coat. There, marring the silky pale skin, was a very fine red line; without looking, Neji knew it would be all the way around Itachi's neck. Touching it with a finger, Neji wondered; he'd often woken up with one hand lightly grasping his own throat, as though he was reliving the moment when he'd seen the chakra blade held in Sasuke's hand slice neatly through Itachi's neck.

There hadn't been much blood, he remembered. The heat of the chakra had cauterized the blood vessels too quickly. Back then, he'd thought he would never see Itachi look at him with desire in his eyes ever again.

But here he was. Neji reached up and ran his hand through Itachi's bangs, and the older man turned his head and nestled his cheek into Neji's broad palm. He could feel Itachi's eyelashes tickling the heel of his palm.

"Where are we, Itachi?"

"We're at home, aren't we?"

"Where's that?"

"Neji."

"Yes, Itachi?"

"I'm happy."

And Neji ceased to think of it as a dream, and began thinking of it as how he could defend himself from a threat.

"Did you bring your gear up here?" Neji asked as he stood and stretched.

"What gear?"

"Didn't you bring anything else?"

Itachi frowned, getting up and absently brushing off his clothes before wandering around the room, touching various objects, picking some up before putting them back down. Neji dressed and watched him move around; he'd known Itachi for long enough to know that these motions were restless, not calm and calculated. At last, Itachi paused in the middle of the room and looked at Neji.

"Have I been ill?"

Neji stared at him. "Yes," he said finally, his voice soft. "Yes, you've been slightly ill." _If being dead counts as a disease._

To his surprise, Itachi brightened visibly. "That explains it then," he said. "That's why I can't remember very much."

As Neji watched the other move around the room again, serious and stoic, examining everything with a shinobi's trained eye, he began to relax and think that this might indeed be the real Itachi. Somehow, he had been given back his lover, even though he seemed somehow skewed, simplified into the mannerisms Neji was so attached to, and given new ones that didn't quite mesh with the person Neji knew. Of course, Neji realized that he might not have known Itachi as well as he thought he did, and that the Uchiha could have and probably was hiding things from him even when things were more serious between them. But some things just didn't work out in Neji's analytical mind. Some things just weren't _Itachi._

Suddenly, Itachi was clinging to him. "What's going on, Neji?" he asked, tucking the brunet's head under his chin. "Is there something wrong? You have such a serious expression on your face."

"No, things couldn't be better."

"That means there is something on your mind."

"Of course not!" Neji said, nuzzling Itachi's shoulder as he pushed away. "Itachi, I've got to go. Wait here for me, okay? Should I bring you something to eat?"

"Eat?" Itachi shoot his head, his beautiful hair flopping around his shoulders. "No, I'm not hungry. How long will you be?"

"Only an hour or so."

"I'm coming with you."

"You can't. I have work I've got to do, Itachi."

"I'm coming with you."

This wasn't Itachi; he would have shrugged and gone to sit on the bed, or wandered off on his own. Itachi only insisted when it was obviously something in line with his interests, and while being around Neji after so long away might have been in line with them, if Neji was insistent about being alone, Itachi would have let him be.

"You can't."

He was seized again tightly, bone-crushingly; and Neji stayed in the warm embrace (for it was warm; he had ascertained that Itachi was quite warm and the muscles quite supple), his hands curled on Itachi's chest and head pillowed on the other's shoulder again. Itachi leaned his head against Neji's and sighed. Neji couldn't help himself; his mind recognized Itachi and responded to the other's body, desiring him beyond reason into the realms of madness.

_How did you do this to me?_

_A blanket spread on sun-warmed grass, crushed under their bodies and fragrant even through the cloth, limbs tangled together and black and brown hair running together across the cloth. Itachi ran his lips over the seal, following them with his fingers, and Neji shivered. Itachi pressed chakra into it in a certain way, and he whined, arching against the other's body. It hurt, but Itachi made it hurt in a way to make it turn to pleasure._

_I could ask you the same question._

Swallowing, Neji pushed himself away again. "Itachi, it's out of the question. You can't come with me."

"No." Itachi's face was closing up.

"Why can't you stay here?"

"I…I'm not sure," Itachi said. "I can't."

"Why?"

"It's as though…It is as though I can't let you out of my sight." Itachi had undergone an imperceptible change, something that Neji realized marked him as a wholly different entity than the man whose shape he wore. He was holding and being held and gazing into the eyes of a creature that he did not know, his hands were sliding up Itachi's chest and over his shoulders, down his arms, pinioning his own shoulders to grasp Itachi's wrists and pull them from around him, twining their fingers together. And slowly, he began to push Itachi's hands behind him, looking around for something to tie them with—his garrote wire was in his pack—

Suddenly Itachi jerked his elbows together; Neji resisted for a second but was knocked backwards with more strength than he remembered Itachi having and when he looked up again, Itachi was smiling calmly at him as though nothing had ever happened, as though he had no recollection of almost throwing Neji across the room.

It was not a dream. It was very, very real. He held this in his mind and quelled a rising tide of panic.

Going through his things, Neji's fingers hit a tiny glass vial at the bottom of the bag, and trembling, shifted so he could look at it without pulling it out. It was the panic pill that every shinobi of a rank above chuunin carried with them. Bullying his mind into ignoring the presence of the thing that looked like Itachi, Neji concealed the vial in his hand as he pulled it out and wandered into the bathroom, grabbing one of the glasses by the sink and filling it with water. Dropping the little tablet in, he watched as it fizzed at the bottom of the class, the tiny black piece of death shrinking as it dissolved. He made no secret of what he was doing; Itachi was still poking through the things in the room, and wasn't paying much attention to him at the moment.

When the rock had dissolved entirely, Neji carried the glass out into the room, smiling at the other. "Here, drink this," he said, and handed the glass over. Without a second thought or a question, Itachi took the glass and drained it in three swallows, setting it aside after and nuzzling up against Neji again. Neji sat on the bed; Itachi sat on the floor and leaned his head against the Hyuuga's knee. Unable to help himself, Neji reached down and ran his fingers through Itachi's hair over and over. It was just as he remembered it, slightly coarse, but soft.

The minutes passed. Glancing at the angle of the sun, Neji reasoned it had to have been at least half an hour; the pills took longer to work when dissolved in water, but Itachi should have been thrashing around on the floor in pain by now. Shaking the other's shoulder, he called softly, "Itachi."

The other murmured something and shivered. His face was drawn in pain, and Neji sighed. His heart hurt, but he told himself sternly that whoever this was, it was not Itachi.

All of a sudden the other leapt up, laughing merrily. Horrified, Neji stood too. "What's so funny?"

"I don't know," the other said, getting control of his laughter at last. "It's just…I am being so…I'm behaving like an idiot, and you are too, aren't you? Like Glee."

Neji stared. "Like—who?"

"Glee. You know, your teammate?"

After Lee had been too exuberant upon returning home after being delayed on a mission for a week, Neji had snapped that Lee ought add a 'g' to his name to make it 'glee.' But there was no way Itachi could have known that, because it happened four years after he had been executed. Neji sat down; this was beginning to give him a massive headache.

Itachi came over to the bed and laid his head in Neji's lap, looking back up at him. "You stare at me a lot," he said softly, and reached up to trace Neji's nose.

"I have to go out, Itachi…if you insist on coming with me, I'll take you."

"Good." He sprung up, straightening his clothes and tying his hair back again.

"But you can't wear the coat. It's still a symbol of terror from my comrades."

"That's all right." Itachi went to take off his coat, and found he couldn't; the buttons on the front were only for show. He wiggled it over his head and tossed it on the bed. Neji could only admire the firm, muscled abdomen that he remembered caressing so many times, taut under the mesh armor shirt.

Looking out, Neji saw nobody in the corridor, and heard no noise from the rest of the floor. Leading Itachi by the hand, he led the other out of the house and through the deserted, dead town to the lip of the cliff overlooking the lake. They followed it for about half an hour, to the waterfalls at the far side. Itachi was looking around with interest, at the sky and trees and the grass under his sandals; Neji was right at the lip, looking down at the base of the waterfall, where there were many jagged rocks. If someone fell off, there was no way they could possibly survive.

"This is a beautiful place," Itachi said dreamily behind him. Neji made a sound of agreement and beckoned him closer.

"Look down there," he said. "The sun's at just the right angle to make a bow in the mist."

As Itachi leaned over, Neji wrenched his hand free, then gave Itachi a mighty shove; he went over the cliff and didn't even make an attempt to stop himself with chakra. Neji turned away and was running before he could hear the impact. Tears streamed out of his eyes as he ran back through the forest, through the town and up to the house.

He had just killed the closest thing to his lover that he'd had in six years. What kind of a monster was he?

Shoving the makeshift door aside, Neji burst into the foyer, and came face to face with Orochimaru.

* * *

Hinata bolted up in bed, a cry on her lips. Immediately Naruto was beside her, blinking sleep from his big blue eyes.

"What's wrong, Hinata-chan?" he asked, putting a hand on her shoulder. Her skin was hot to touch, and worried, he felt her forehead and cheeks. She shook her head as he did, she didn't have a fever.

"It was just a bad dream," she said, and lay back down.

"Aw, those suck-'tebayo," he said, laying back down himself. "I used to have 'em a lot after the bastard had run off."

"What was it like, losing a teammate?" Hinata asked, laying on her side to face Naruto on his futon. His blue eyes were almost luminescent in their depth of color, and he hummed softly as he thought.

"It would be like losing you," he said thoughtfully. "Imagine someone who's always been there, and then take them away. Off the map completely, poof." He spread his fingers to illustrate. "It's like being empty."

Hinata burrowed in her futon a bit. Neji had had such dreams almost nightly after they'd let him out of the ANBU holding area. She'd heard him screaming all the way in here in the heart of the main house. She wondered if he felt the same way after losing Itachi. She was sure he did.

Unlike with Orochimaru, Hinata could have compassion for someone like Itachi. Where Orochimaru had killed and then violated the bodies with his perverse pseudoscience, Itachi had had a cause, had killed and then left the bodies and run off. His crimes were no less heinous and she was shocked that someone like her cousin would find it in him to share a bed with someone like Itachi, but, she thought, Neji was a genius. He must have known something that she didn't. And he'd grieved for a long time. He still was; she often saw the incense in front of the marker he'd insisted on placing in the shrine.

Perhaps Neji was just more compassionate than she was.

"Empty…" she murmured.

"But hey, don't worry," Naruto said with one of his winning, cheerful smiles. "We aren't gonna leave you. At least, I won't. Sasuke probably couldn't either. I really like you, Hinata-chan."

That warmed her from the inside out, and she blushed furiously. Naruto watched as she nestled under the blankets and closed her eyes, Sasuke's words from before rattling around in his head.

_I do like her,_ he thought. _But could I love her? Naah, she can do better than a fox like me…but I bet she'd like it._

Mind chasing itself in circles, Naruto fell into sleep.

On the roof above, Sasuke relaxed, and went back to patrolling. He always took the night patrols now, preferring the company of the moon and stars and his own head.

Being around the Hyuugas so long had brought snide remarks about the incident from the less thrilled members of the clan. Orochimaru was stirring more often in his head, and Sasuke was worried. He had scheduled an appointment with Tsunade for the day after tomorrow, to check up on the seal, but for now he battled it out alone.

His strongest opponent was the voice that said he wouldn't mind seeing the snake again, even if it was just in his head.

* * *

Neji dropped into a crouch, furiously wiping tear-stains from his face. His eyelashes were gummed together and obscured his vision, but as he activated the Byakugan he paused. Orochimaru had no chakra system.

Anko suddenly blazed out of nowhere, stepping on front of her old sensei. "Don't attack him!" she shrieked in an oddly high-pitched voice. "Leave him alone!"

"Anko-san," Neji said, panting. "He doesn't have a chakra—"

"I know," Anko snapped.

"Hello," Orochimaru said. "You're a Hyuuga, aren't you? And a strong one too; I can tell."

"Hyuuga Neji." Now that he was calmer, Neji could notice details; Orochimaru wasn't wearing the purple bow and tan robe that Neji had glimpsed at the Chuunin exams, but the gear of a Leaf jounin. The hitae-ate glinted on his forehead, and Neji shivered. It was like looking back sixty years in the past.

"Come on, let's go into the kitchen and have something to eat," Anko said, and took Orochimaru by the hand. Neji's gut clenched; they were interacting the same way that he had with the thing that looked like Itachi.

"Wait here," Anko instructed, once she'd gotten Orochimaru seated. "I'll be right back. I'll be just in that other room there, okay?"

"I want to come with you."

"I'll only be a moment, sensei. I just want to talk to Neji here."

Looking sour, Orochimaru watched them as they went through the door. Breathing a sigh of relief, Anko looked Neji up and down and said, "You've had a visitor, haven't you." It was not a question.

"Yes," Neji said, and gulped.

"I think I can tell who it was. And you didn't resort to any direct attacks? No Jyuuken, nothing?"

"No. Restraint, then panic pills."

"Well," Anko said, looking impressed. "You're doing far better than any of us did. No broken sinks or broken bones, you didn't even turn the room upside-down. Just one, two, and—over the cliff, I'm assuming, since I didn't see any smoke?"

"Yes." Neji swallowed. How could she talk about it so casually—then he smirked. They were shinobi; they killed without thought or remorse.

"So, we have about three hours before he comes back," Anko said, looking at the sun through the window. "I am going to tell you a little bedtime story, Neji-san, about how all of this came about. But we'll have to be very quiet; if he hears it out there, he'll be upset. And we must be quick, because they cannot leave us alone for very long."

Neji swallowed. He felt as though a great many things were rushing toward him at once, and he was defenseless against them.


	5. Chapter 4: The Little Apocrypha

Chapter IV: 'The Little Apocrypha'

"I have to give you some idea of the why of everything," Anko said. "You're probably thinking, 'How does it choose? Why did it have to pick the one thing in my mind that causes me so much pain?'" She laughed hollowly, and out in the dining room Neji heard Orochimaru moving around.

"We all have things in our heads, Neji. I mean, we're shinobi, we've seen and done things that would make a normal person's blood curdle…some more than others…" her eyes glazed over and her hand went up to her shoulder, rubbing over a certain spot on it. "Some of us have seen horrible things done to others, ones we've known…" she looked at Neji with those hollow eyes, and he shivered. "Ones we've loved."

"I thought I was under a genjutsu," Neji spat. "Or haven't you read the records?"

"Don't think I'm stupid, Hyuuga," Anko said. "You didn't react like someone under genjutsu. It would have been broken the moment you set foot in the ANBU holding facility; there are more nulling jutsu on that place than anywhere else in Fire Country. No, Neji, you kept fighting and screaming for him." She pitched her voice in a horrible impression of Neji's. " '_I'm not under genjutsu, you damn fools! Take me, kill me instead!_' "

"Shut up!" Neji yelled. "Shut up, you don't know a damn thing!"

"Don't I, Neji?" Anko looked anxiously at the door, but all they heard was Orochimaru's restless pacing. "Don't you think that even after he deserted me, the village, his own fucking _teammates_ who were the only family he had left—don't you think even after that I loved him still? It's hard for kids to get rid of their childhood crushes. Look…" she pulled her hair out of the clip and ran a hand through it. "What I'm getting at is, there's something deep in our minds, some fantasy or memory or something that we hide away for whatever reason. It's something our waking mind can't deal with. It's something we don't want to admit to ourselves."

"And this is manifested--?"

"The lake, you idiot." She scowled. "The lake's the thing that's doing it. Scholars come up with all these grand theories and all shinobi are to them are the guinea pigs and rats sent out to run their little theoretical, philosophical mazes. But don't you see? We come here and we all think that we're doing something grand and adventurous and in the spirit of science.

"Do you know," she said, "That in one of the deeper levels of the ANBU facility—the above-ground portion of which moves every week, in case you wanted to know, that's why we kept knocking you out and blindfolding you—in one of the deep levels, there are cells full of prisoners?"

"We were down deep enough."

"Deeper than you two. They weren't going to put anyone but Orochimaru himself in levels below you." She paused to listen, then continued. "But one of the levels is full of prisoners—shinobi of all ranks, citizens, prisoners of war, you see. And in that level, the worst interrogations are carried out—and also the autopsies…some of the bodies are still twitching, Neji, and that is a sight I don't think I'll be able to get out of my head as long as I live and breathe. We're none of us any better than the old snake, and at least he thought he had something in mind. See how far that got him.

"But they never tell anyone but the highest-ranking ANBU and the Hokage this. Because most people, Neji, don't want to know the whole fucking truth. They want a mirror held up to them; they want to see things that are within their realms of understanding, and when something arrives that they can't comprehend, they want to destroy it."

Neji stared at her. Her hair was in disarray, her clothes rumpled, and it was obvious she hadn't had a good night's sleep in weeks. What could her proselytizing be caused by? He wondered. Psychosis?

"Diagnosing us, are you?" she asked nastily. "Going to dig out some more panic pills and slip them in our water? Don't be in too much of a hurry to find some nice words to write in your report. You've only been through one easy ordeal."

"So the devil had pity on me?"

"What do you want me to say?" Anko said. "That a _lake_ has been fucking with our heads all along? That it's a _lake_ that sends us phantoms from our pasts? Do you want to know if the lake is _plotting?_ I'll tell you exactly what it's plotting, Neji—abso-fuckin'-lutely nothing."

"What do you mean, nothing?

Anko smiled ruefully.

"Kakashi came up with the idea that if we all poured chakra into the lake, maybe it'd do something. I think he was bored." She laughed. "But for lack of anything better to do, we did it. We poured all our chakra into the lake—that was, oh, maybe two weeks ago now. We think the lake responded with a kind of counter-chakra, something that picked our brains and came up with a sort of mental tumor."

"Tumor?"

"Something that's sat in our heads and festered—weren't you listening? Whatever we've got in there that we don't want to let out, not ever. And for us, since we're around death, our visitors," she dropped her voice to a whisper on that last word, "Are people who have died. It started with Kakashi. We'd been here about two months, when all of a sudden he started locking himself in his room and speaking to us through the door, or only coming out but staying right near the door. We all thought he'd lost it—you know, a smart guy, but he's been through a hell of a lot, and sometimes you geniuses, you just snap—"

"I'm aware."

"Anyway, we'd all thought he'd lost it. He told us a bit of it through the locked door, but not everything by far. He was trying to work it all out, trying to figure out what it meant. You know what he was doing? You have to know."

"Chakra pulse calculations…"

"Right. He thought he was nuts too!" Anko giggled. "It went on about a week. We thought he'd gone completely mad—we could hear his voice, but also some noises we thought he was making. I've got my own ideas about why we couldn't hear Obito talking to him. We thought he was suffering a nervous breakdown. I gave him his medpack, and that was what had the panic pills, a whole team dosage, in it. But he wasn't using it for himself. He was trying it on someone else. One day we'd decided that if he didn't come out, we'd break down the door. And we did, and…"

"You found him."

"Yeah. But in the meantime, our own visitors had come, and we hadn't had a chance to tell him what we'd been experiencing."

Neji thought about this. It was all too much to process right now, but something was nagging at him. "Anko-san, you've had some experience with them. Tell me…will he—will the person who visited me today come back?"

"Yes and no."

"What does _that_ mean?"

"He—this person will come back like nothing's happened. He won't know you tried to poison him, or that you pushed him off a cliff. He won't remember that he's been here before. If you follow the rules, he won't be aggressive—unless you want him to, of course, if that—"

"Anko-san."

"Sorry." She grinned sheepishly.

"What are the rules?"

"Depends."

"Anko-san!"

"What?"

"Stop wasting time!"

"All right!" Anko looked at him. "Tell me who he was."

"Itachi, you know the story."

"I know what ANBU wrote down."

Neji knew what she was asking him, swallowed, and looked away.

"It was the night of the eighth month stargazing festival," he said, "The year there was a spectacular meteor shower. Six years ago. I saw it through my cell window." He laughed hollowly. "Itachi was in the cell next to mine, but they had him drugged so he couldn't look out the window. But he would have been gone that very morning after I woke up…but I asked him to stay." Neji glared at the bandage he'd put on his knuckle where he'd punched through the tile.

"I wanted him to stay," he said softly. "I was selfish and wanted him to stay with me that night, so we could watch the meteor shower together. We'd watched some other years, but they had always been such fleeting moments. I wanted one night where it was just the two of us, no worries of discovery, no distractions…we'd been planning to go up over the Hokage monument. There's a clearing there we always met at. He wanted to leave and come back that night, but I told him he'd be safe in my room. He'd never been discovered before, and I'd always put a jutsu-lock on the door. But somehow he was found out—someone knew he was there, somehow, and they told Sasuke and he broke the jutsu-lock, and he was on Itachi too fast for him to get a genjutsu spun up. So it was my fault he was caught."

Just talking about it like this made a lump rise in his throat. "Sasuke…he was furious. He called me—"

"—just as much a betrayer as his brother." Anko nodded. "I get the idea. That trial was a joke though."

"A total farce."

Anko sighed, shifted her weight. "Anyway, these visitors…if you attack them, they come back, just as you remember them. But…changed. Obviously enough for you to—"

"Yes, changed." Neji didn't want to think about it. "Did Kakashi know as much as we do now before he…?"

"Most likely."

"Did he tell you anything?"

"No. I found a book in his room, _The Little—_"

"—_Apocrypha_?" Neji held out his hand. "I'd like to read it."

Anko handed it over, a slim scroll, old and tattered in places. Neji pocketed it.

"And what about Shizune?"

"Shizune!" Anko laughed. "Well, everyone's got their own way dealing with things. She's spent so much time around bureaucracy that she sticks to that out of habit. It's either that, admit she's nuts like the rest of us, or commit a crime."

"A crime?"

Anko grinned in that snakelike way again. "Divorce by ejection or conflagration, shall we say?"

Neji looked at her askance. "That's a morbid way to put it."

"We've done morbid things here, Neji. Get used to it. So do you have a plan for when he gets back?"

"No, I haven't…" The Hyuuga looked away. "I don't have any idea what I'll do. How do they get in though? We could put ninjutsu-locks on the doors, a genjutsu on the house—"

"Won't matter. We've tried, they just break it."

"Genjutsu?"

"Particularly violently."

"So why don't you all just leave?" Neji was growing impatient with them. What had happened to the strong jounin he'd known?

"Do you think it's just that easy? That we can just slip away between their arrivals?" Anko shrugged. "Even if we don't learn anything about the lake or _them_, we may learn something about ourselves."

"And what did Kakashi learn, then?"

"That in the end, he was much too weak."

* * *

Neji left her to have dinner with Orochimaru and wandered back to his room. As soon as he turned round he saw the red-and-black cloak on his bed and shuddered, picking it up and throwing it over the back of a chair. It had not been a dream; it was all too realy.

Pulling out a message scroll, he began writing his initial report, remarks on the condition of each person and the team as a whole. The little scroll he put aside on the table in his room, and he did not read it just yet. When he got to where he would have to mention the visitors, he paused.

_Now I see why they didn't include it in their reports,_ he thought. _How would it sound if we wrote 'the lake is manifesting people years dead'?_ So against his own judgment, he excluded them. _I will mention them next time. Either way, the truth will come out when we return home with them in tow._

Finishing up the report, he rolled that and Kakashi's post-mortem report into the message tube and pulled out a third scroll. Unrolling it, he focused his chakra and made a series of hand seals, lightning-fast; a bird summon, a hawk, appeared in the center of the paper. Fastening the tube to its leg, Neji carried it to the window and let it go, watching it fly away. Rolling up the summon scroll, he tucked it back in its pocket and at last, picked up _The Little Apocrypha._

It was the deposition and interrogation of the author, including log entries that he'd kept on the boat that had had the accident on the lake. Neji read it all; Yume spoke of a great fog descending on the area, but with little whirlpools in its gray covering, openings to the sky, It was in one of these, he said, that he saw the surface of the lake shift all around him (it remained calm in the vicinity of his boat) and grow into 'fantastic shapes' as he put it; he said, and this was apparently on record at the Administrative Tower in Mist, that the surface of the lake had formed a garden with shrubbery, arches, trees—but it wasn't a garden at the same time, as everything was made of water. And it was more the suggestion of a bush or a hedge, with no detail to it. And then, as he watched, the garden had collapsed into water again and then boiled up into the form of a giant infant, at least ten feet in height, terrible to behold.

Yume's interrogator had taken him off record several times, as Yume would not proceed until the Council of the Mist Village had announced if it believed him or not. At one point, the scroll noted that their session had lasted three hours, and they had discussed the man who had disappeared in front of Yume's eyes off the boat, a man named Kikuchi Mora, from Grass. Yume had sworn his interrogator to secrecy, and would only allow him to tell the council if they reversed their ruling on his mental state.

Also included in the scroll, toward the end, was a copy of the last page of a letter from Yume's interrogator to a friend of his in the Records division of the administration of the Grass Village, and apparently forwarded to Yume:

_...absolutely unconscionable, this blockade of our knowledge into the incident. A bunch of doddering old fools, to be sure. I doubt your administration is much different; anxious to preserve their authority and not be seen as the laughingstock of the Villages and the Great Countries._

_Bound as I am by oath, I can't reveal to you what Yume told me. The only reason they disregarded Yume's testimony was because he is in dissent with many of their decisions and they wish to make an example out of him, to show their village what happens when their orders are disobeyed. The Mizukage ought to censure them but we know he's getting on in years himself, and hasn't yet chosen a successor. He's probably worried it'll go to some militaristic idiot and wants to hold out for a better candidate, but until then he has to keep his seat safe. Either way, Yume's ability of observation is astounding and should be taken into account._

_I have a few small favors to ask you, friend; Yume's partner in the incident, a Grass-nin by the name of Kikuchi Mora, disappeared, and Yume saw some rather spectacular things manifested after his disappearance. If you can please send me copies of:_

_i), Kikuchi's biography, especially details of his childhood if you have them,_

_ii)Everything you know of his family or clan, facts and dates,_

_iii)the topography of the place in your country where he was brought up._

_I know you thought my interpretation of events fantastic and borderline insanity, but please at least humor me. I still believe the source of the things Yume saw to have been Kikuchi—or rather, Kikuchi's mind. Madness, I know, nonetheless...we have been friends through many things, and I wish us to remain that way._

_Yours,_

_R._

Neji put the scroll away and looked out the window. There was a mist forming from over the lake, and it drifted past in little tufts. The sun turned it golden.

There was a knock on the door.

"Neji? Can I come in?"

Still staring out the window, Neji called, "Come in, it's open."

* * *

Tsunade pressed her chakra into the seal on Sasuke's shoulder, letting it spread out to every corner and character of the jutsu that kept the Heaven mark in place. Under her capable hands, Sasuke shivered. He'd never be used to the feeling of another's chakra flooding his body, he didn't think.

Going character by character, Tsunade checked over the seal, closing any holes the corrosive power of the seal had created with a deft patch. Something seemed off, though—more power was leaking through than usual, and with a start she realized that it was because Kakashi's seal, the original seal on this, was gone. That could only mean one thing; Kakashi was dead.

Biting her lip, Tsunade patched up the rest of the holes, checked her handiwork, and pulled her chakra out. "That seal is fine," she said, keeping her voice calm. "Now I'm going to check the other one."

Parting the back of his hair, she found a thin line of characters, and followed it up to where it intersected another line of characters that went across the width of his skull. Putting two fingers at that juncture, she pressed chakra into that as well.

A few minutes later, she pulled out, having sealed up any holes. It was disconcerting, being so close to what was left of Orochimaru's consciousness; it was such a familiar feeling, but so different at the same time. She could almost feel him brooding in the slumber he would never wake from again. "Both the seals are fine," she said. "You shouldn't be having any more problems, but come to me if some crop up."

She did not tell him about the absence of Kakashi's seal. The visual component had been covered by the amalgam of things she'd put on his shoulder to regulate the chakra flow and make sure he didn't access all of its power at once again, so he wouldn't have noticed that way. Watching him leave, she wondered, _What is going on at that lake? Neji's report is due in tonight or tomorrow._

Sitting at her desk again, she busied herself with paperwork, trying to make herself forget.


	6. Chapter 5: The Monsters

**WARNING: THERE IS M/M SEX IN THIS CHAPTER. IF THIS OFFENDS YOU, DO NOT READ IT.**

Chapter V: The Monsters

He was lying on the bed, his head pillowed on Itachi's shoulder. They were as they'd been so many times when Itachi had climbed in through Neji's window, smelling of the forest and wood smoke. Half the time they hadn't even had sex, preferring to lay still and calm, dozing in each other's arms. More words were spoken with silence than with words, which could be twisted and manipulated to serve anyone's purpose. And this was how they'd lain; limbs tangled together, hair unbound. Itachi smelled just as he always had. Neji drank it in in great draughts.

The night was alive now; above him, Neji heard footsteps, indistinct voices shouting words in languages he didn't know. He went on, and seemed to grow smaller, lighter, more insubstantial, and he rose through the house and into the sky and was surrounded by galaxies swirling away from him. They spun out their billion-year lifespans in the blink of an eye and he was left in darkness. He wanted to scream…

The room was bathed in the light of the moon, outlining the furniture and all objects in the room in silver. Itachi was laying on his side now, Neji's head pillowed on his upper arm, and he was looking at Neji curiously. The Hyuuga sat up and ran a hand through his sweat-damp hair, and Itachi sat up with him, rubbing the arm Neji had been sleeping on. It had gone numb.

"You had a nightmare."

Neji slid into Itachi's lap, needing the closeness and warmth now that his skin was exposed to the chill air. "Yes, I did," he replied, and sighed as warmth from the other's body crept into him. He could feel Itachi's heart beating under his cheek and hear it in his ear. "Did you sleep?"

"I do not think so. I am not weary…but do not let that keep you from sleeping. Why do you keep looking at me like that?"

This Itachi was much more like the Itachi he remembered, Neji thought. And for that he was glad; if he'd encountered another thing that held the other's shape and voice but behaved entirely differently, he would have gone mad. The silver light had washed all the blue out of Itachi's pupils and left them a deep gray color, the long lashes touched with the same shade.

"Are we going to stay here very long, Neji?"

Neji wanted to laugh at the irony of that question coming from Itachi. "Quite a while, probably. Why, where else could we go?"

He had been thinking, dozing off while Itachi kept watch over them both; he realized that Anko was right about when they returned. This time, Itachi had more of his own personality because Neji's memories had been jogged. He'd blocked it out, but forcing him to look and consider it again had opened his mind.

Itachi did not blink (it was a habit of all shinobi to blink very rarely, something that disconcerted most normal people), and instead ran his fingers over Neji's seal again, the corners of his lips lifting just a bit. "I do not know," he said finally. "Somewhere away from here. I do not like this place."

Surprised, Neji processed this information; his memory had conjured up a much more accurate Itachi, because the Itachi of Neji's memories would not have stayed more than a night in this place. "In a few days," he said, and pushed his hands into Itachi's hair, pulling him down for a kiss.

The Uchiha was just as responsive as Neji remembered. It was a habit they had both fallen into, the times when they had half a night or less, times of breathless touches and silence. His lips were just as soft and yet firm, dominating him just enough to excite him. Itachi knew he could run chakra through every one of the points on his body and nearly kill him, but he knew, too, that Neji would not do it. And the knowledge that Itachi knew and did what he did anyway excited the Hyuuga.

Greedily, he slid his tongue between Itachi's lips and teeth and stroked the other's tongue, lapping his lover's mouth with his own, drinking up the taste he'd craved for so long. And Itachi responded in kind, just as hungry and desperate as Neji. They matched each other breath for breath, touch for touch, hands trailing over skin and hair as though they were just exploring the other's body for the first time. And when Itachi's lips left his and trailed down his neck, the delicate, deadly hands caressing his hip before pushing his sleeping pants off, Neji purred softly, arching under his hand. It was familiar, it was safe. It was what he wanted.

For a long time—he had no idea just _how_ long, as time was measured for him in bated breath and the touch of fingers to bare skin—they simply took delight in touching and caressing and kissing each other. Itachi had apparently come with a knowledge of every place that made Neji's breath catch in his throat and his fingers tighten on the Uchiha's shoulders as the other crouched over him, long hair trailing down to tickle the other's skin with the ends. And the beautiful dark blue eyes glittered up at him, filling with lust as they always had.

Trailing lower, Itachi made to take Neji's now-erect cock in his mouth, but Neji stopped him. He'd waited long enough to feel this again, he didn't want to go through all the preliminary song and dance. (Even if it _did_ feel wonderful to have his length in Itachi's mouth.) There was a minor road bump when he remembered that he hadn't packed any lubricant, but then he found a bottle of cream in one of the drawers and shoved it at Itachi. Watching as Itachi spread the clear cream on his fingers, Neji felt nervousness flutter in his stomach. It had been years since this—years since he'd had sex at all. What if—

And then Itachi's first finger was inside him and he moaned softly, relaxing and letting his body adjust to this intrusion. Watching Neji's face, Itachi curled and flexed his finger, going slowly for he knew that Neji wasn't used to this. When the Hyuuga had relaxed enough he slid a second finger in, searching for that all-important little spot inside him. Scissoring his fingers, Itachi smirked when Neji arched up off the bed. He pressed his fingers harder against it, rubbing in little circles, and the Hyuuga moaned, toes curling.

"Ha…Hurry up, Itachi," he gasped, glaring down at the other man and lifting his hips insistently. He wanted something bigger inside him than fingers.

"Be patient," Itachi said, voice as mild as if they were discussing the weather. Neji whined as the Uchiha added a third finger, rocking them in and out of him fast but gently. Watching Neji writhe and moan, all because of him, was more of a turn-on than anything else. If Itachi knew what dreams looked like, Neji would be it, his pale skin flushed and his hair spread out across the functional white sheets, black in the light. He pressed again against the other's prostate and Neji cried out, tossing his head from side to side.

At last he pulled his hand out, wiping it on a corner of the bedsheets, and quickly spread the cream over his cock. Panting in anticipation, Neji shifted onto his side, bending one long, strong leg. "This way," he said, pulling Itachi down as soon as he finished. "I want it this way." Not complaining, Itachi lay down behind Neji, propping himself up on one elbow while the other hand guided his length into his lover.

And—oh, the feeling of being full—the perfect fit—the way Itachi moved inside him—

When he came, crying out into the night as he thrust down against Itachi moving inside him, he felt complete for the first time in six years.

He dropped off several times after that, each time jolting himself awake with some shock as he dropped into dream. Exhausted, sweaty, Neji pressed closer to Itachi, calming himself down slowly as he felt the other's fingers press against his skin, feeling if he had a fever or not. He was running a temperature. It was Itachi, the real Itachi, the one and only Itachi.

Neji fell asleep.

* * *

When he woke up, it was to Itachi watching him again, one hand idly toying with the other's hair as he'd often done. Neji's hair was fine, but thick and heavy, and it fascinated Itachi. He'd been forever playing with it and petting it into place, without ever letting Neji do the same with his hair. This had been resolved by Neji touching it after Itachi had fallen asleep.

"You were asleep a long time," Itachi said. "How do you feel?"

"Hungry." Neji sat up, and Itachi slid off the bed and padded, barefoot, into the bathroom. He was wearing only his pants, and Neji could not help but watch him leave, a little ache in his chest. But Itachi's path brought Neji's eyes to rest on the two coats folded over the back of a chair; two completely identical coats, down to the stitching on the clouds and at the seams.

Itachi, looking in the mirror, followed Neji's glance. "I think perhaps the buttons must be rusted together," he said. "It is good that they are made wide enough for my head to fit through the neck."

Neji was filled with a dread that trumped any feeling of contentment left over from their night together. Backing toward the bathroom door, he looked inside—Itachi was busy cleaning up something inside there. He'd always been one for fastidiousness. Slowly, though, so slowly, Neji closed the bathroom door with a soft click, and held the knob shut. The tap continued to run, bottles clinking and the sound of the washcloth Itachi had sponged his forehead with being put over the rack to dry (that distinctive _swish-plop_ sound only wet cloth made). And then, nothing. Neji waited, jaw clenched, gripping the knob with both hands with all his strength. It was nearly torn from his grasp. The door bent _inwards_ before shattering. The Hyuuga caught a glimpse of a deathly pale face and wild hair before Itachi reached him and wrapped his arms around his shoulders.

He wanted to escape, run away and get out of this town full of ghosts and spirits, but it was too late now. Itachi's breathing was ragged and convulsive, and as Neji peeled the older man off him and laid him on the bed, he saw that the nails on Itachi's hands were torn off, and the skin raw. On the Uchiha's palms, he'd been cut down to the bone.

"Itachi."

The only answer was a soft groan. Neji went over to the bag of first-aid supplies he'd brought along, but turned back as the bed creaked. Itachi was sitting up, hair in disarray around his face, staring at his bloodied and torn hands.

"What happened?" he asked, turning his hands over to look at the scarred backs, then looked up to see the pieces of the bathroom door. Neji had never had to see Uchiha Itachi hide terror before. "Neji," he asked slowly, in that voice that told others he meant business. "What did I do?"

Cutting some gauze strips, Neji carried those, a cloth, and antiseptic over to the bed, and sat close to Itachi, pulling one of the hands back toward him. Looking down at it, however, he froze. The nails had grown back; turning the hands over, he saw light scars on the palms, but even those were healing well. "What did you do that for, Itachi?"

Itachi glanced between his hands and the door. "I…am not sure." He shifted, uncomfortable. He had never not known the reason for an action before. "I looked for you, but you were not in the bathroom. I thought you might be in the shower, but you were not."

"And after that."

"I do not remember."

"Nothing?"

"No. I remember looking for you, and then I was out here."

Neji smiled up at the other, cupping his cheek. "It's nothing," he said. "I'll clean up the pieces later. Let's go get some food."

Thankfully, there was no one in the kitchen right now, and Neji cooked a meal for both of them. Itachi ate, but it was clear he was only doing so to be polite and not because he wanted to. Afterwards, Neji led Itachi to the library, where he selected a few volumes to study and Itachi sat in a chair by the window, not ten feet away, a scroll open but unread in his lap as he stared out over the dead city.

"Doing some light reading?"

Anko was standing behind him. Orochimaru was behind her about the same distance as Itachi was from Neji, pretending to peruse the bookshelves. Rolling the scroll he was reading, Neji set it down on the desk. "Just a little."

Looking over, Anko whistled appreciatively at Itachi, who looked back her, bored. "Good taste, Neji."

"I doubt I have a choice in the matter."

"I heard you two last night, you know." She grinned lewdly, licking her lips. "It got mine all riled up."

Neji made a noise of distaste. "What do you want?"

"Shizune wants a conference. Just the three of us, outside the laboratory."

"What?" He sat up. "But she—"

"—doesn't come out, I know, but she does now. One hour, just where I told you."

"Very well." Neji sat back down, picking up the next scroll. "I shall be there."

"Alone." Anko looked pointedly at Itachi, rounded up her own visitor, and left. Neji heaved a sigh, and stared at the characters without actually seeing them.

"Who was that?" Itachi asked.

"Anko."

"Anko-san, former ANBU?"

"That's right."

"I see," he murmured, brow furrowed, and quieted again. Neji went back to his reading, brushing up on the history of the area again. It would never hurt to prepare more; may now, in fact, be a matter of life or death.

The light shifted slowly, and at what he judged was about five minutes to the hour, Neji set the scrolls down and went over, holding a hand out to Itachi. "I'm going to need you to stand back a bit," he said, rubbing his thumb over Itachi's skin as they walked. "And to not listen."

Clenching his jaw, Itachi nodded curtly. About fifteen feet back, he stopped, and Neji dropped his hand and continued on. A few seconds later, Anko ascended the stairs; peeking over the landing, he could see Orochimaru leaning against the wall at the base of the stairs, eyes watching her every move. He caught Neji's gaze, and his eyes narrowed. Shizune appeared not long after.

"Hello!" she said, in a strained and unnaturally high voice, with that sort of fake smile that said that she'd really rather be somewhere else. "I'd like to talk about our…"

"Visitors?" Neji offered. He received twin glares, one panicked and one annoyed.

"Shut up! We don't want them to hear—"

"Do you think they're not listening?" Neji said dryly, and glanced back at Itachi, who was leaning against the wall with his eyes on Neji's back.

"Good point." Shizune brushed her wrinkled clothes off, and said, "I think it'd be best if we shared knowledge on this. Just a little chat."

"A little chat?" Neji heard himself say, as though from a great distance. "I haven't done as much as you probably have, Shizune. But I have the impression that your findings will collaborate on this—everything looks normal, but it's just a cover—a copy. A reproduction that is better than the original, one that satisfies our fantasies and desires."

"Hold on!" Shizune said. "What do you mean?"

Itachi was looking at him again. He'd nearly shouted the last words. "We are dealing with something like a copy of what we want—it is not precisely that, but it has the looks and the characteristics of something—something we've thought about for a long time. And most of the behavior, but when they first come, it's much less precise. However, the initial visit brings more thought to our mind of how the thing is supposed to be."

"Will you be quieter?" Anko hissed, looking nervously back down the stairs. Neji shrugged and continued.

"I'm a shinobi first, not a counselor or someone how analyzes human thought," he said, in a much softer tone of voice. "But this is what I have thought."

"I'd agree with you," Anko said, calmer now that their voices had dropped again. "They seem to be projections of what's in our mind. Within limits, the…creation behaves in the same way as the…er…"

"Original." Shizune whispered. "Now, if you'll all be quiet long enough for me to present my medical findings…"

Neji tuned her out and went inward, thinking about his own ideas. He had no knowledge of the medical field, and what Shizune was saying was rather technical, and he could hear Itachi pacing restlessly, the coat he'd put on rustling around him almost inaudibly.

"…dealing with something beyond atoms, beyond anything we know," Shizune was saying. Neji went out again, but this time he stayed within the confines of the house. For a while, he'd been watching a shadow move behind the little window in the door (it had been covered with a piece of scroll-paper). Slowly, he'd seen the corner of the scroll-paper lifting, and something pink and silver moving into and out of view.

"What it is, we don't know," Shizune said, turning to glance back at the door, then doing a horrified double take. "No, get back, get back!" she cried out, and vanished in a puff of smoke. The scroll-paper fell away entirely, and again Neji saw the glint like light on glasses, and silver hair. There was a crash, and the scroll-paper was hastily replaced.

The meeting was over.

* * *

Neji woke up in the middle of the night to find Itachi sitting on the edge of the bed, head in his hands. He could see the Uchiha was trembling minutely, as he had when he'd come to Neji wounded or was full of adrenaline from a near-encounter with the Konoha guard. But neither of those things had occurred here. Neji sat up.

"Itachi?"

"Do not talk to me," came the other's voice, cold and commanding. Neji's brow furrowed.

"What's going on, Itachi?"

"You don't want me."

Scrubbing his face and looking down at the sheets (and his naked body; they'd made love again before falling asleep wrapped up in each other's arms), Neji looked back up at Itachi, trying to get the nightmare he'd been in from his mind. "What are you talking about?"

"I heard…"

"Heard what?" A surge of fear; had he heard what they'd been saying at the conference?

"You said I was not Itachi. You wanted me to go, and I would…but I cannot. I don't know why. I've tried to go, but I can't." He muttered something that sounded like 'cowardice,' and Neji slid over. This admission—it wasn't like Itachi, it was true, but it still tugged at Neji's heart. Whatever the true nature of these beings sent to them, the fact of the matter was it still wore Itachi's shape, and Neji still reacted to it as he would to Itachi. He leaned against the other's back, wrapping his arms around Itachi's shoulders and saying things, apologizing, begging, pleading, making wild excuses and promises, until at last Itachi pushed him away.

"No," he said. "Do not talk like that, it does not befit you. You are not the same anymore." Neji began to protest but Itachi held up a hand. "I knew this before, but I did not want to see it, thought perhaps the illness you say I have had had affected my memory, but I see now that I was wrong."

That voice was dangerous, Neji thought. Itachi was dangerous like this, and warily he moved next to the other, leaning his head on Itachi's shoulder. "I'm going to tell you the truth," he said softly, hands clasping one of Itachi's. Despite everything that had happened here, despite the fact that he knew in his gut that this wasn't the Itachi he knew and loved, this was close enough. He just wanted _something_—

"We've both changed, Itachi. We all do—but that's not what I want to say. Somehow, it seems…you're forced to stay near me. I'm fine with that…because I can't leave you either." Turning his face into Itachi's shoulder, he breathed in the woodsy, fiery smell he loved dearly. "I have waited six years to be with you again. Don't leave now."

"No, Neji, the change isn't in you," Itachi said. One hand went up to pet Neji's hair gently, sifting through the strands. "It is I. Something is wrong. Perhaps it has to do with whatever kept me in a coma for six years?" He stared at the empty doorway to the bathroom, then looked back at Neji, who lifted his head.

"Have you been sleeping well?" Neji asked.

"I don't know…"

"What do you mean?"

"I dream…but I am not sure if they are dreams or thoughts. It is strange…it is as though they are coming from outside me into my mind."

"Well, they must be dreams then," Neji said quickly, before he started shaking. "We can think about it together more tomorrow, after a bit more sleep." He laid back down, and Itachi laid down next to him, drawing the Hyuuga toward his chest. Grateful for the warmth and the arms around him, Neji tucked his head under Itachi's chin and closed his eyes, draping an arm over Itachi's midsection.

"Neji."

"Yes?"

Itachi did not have to say it with words, but the gentle brush of his lips against Neji's forehead was speech enough for the other man.

Neji almost screamed.

* * *

In the morning he found a note slipped under his door. With Itachi in the shower, Neji broke the seal on the note and read it.

"_Neji, things are getting better. Shizune wants to do some new experiment with something she's devised—I don't want to reproduce it all here, I don't understand it myself—but she wants to know if you can collect a sample of your visitor and give it to her. Don't worry, he'll come right back, but it's up to you either way. All I ask is that you stay outside the room. We can talk through the door._

_-Anko_

Neji's hands shook as he read the note, and reread it, and then carefully burned it with a jolt of searing chakra. Things were getting more complicated than ever.

Wrapped only in a towel, Itachi came out of the bathroom. "What was that?" he asked, drying his hair with another towel.

"Just a bit of trash," Neji said, smiling at him. The tension of last night was gone, replaced by the feeling of wholeness again. He did not want to disturb the harmony of that.

They got dressed and ate in the dining room, sitting close together so that occasionally their thighs would be pressed together or their arms would brush against each other. This small contact seemed to pacify Itachi further, so that when Neji said he wanted to return to the library to do some more reading, Itachi followed without a word, and was content to sit up in the same chair he had yesterday, another book in his lap. Neji browsed the shelves, pulling down a few more scrolls, and busied himself learning the difficult terminology surrounding the recorded Lake phenomena. What he found interesting in his readings, however, was that nowhere was there noted any kind of incident such as they had been experiencing. In none of the post transcripts, in no reports, nothing made mention of humanoid manifestations, save the one instance concerning Yume and that expedition. There had been other manifestations, to be sure; great designs made out of water, it seemed, that throbbed with the power of the chakra holding them up but collapsed at a touch. Numerous accounts of these, no explanations, and nothing of any 'visitors.'

As he read, Neji began coming up with questions, things to ask Anko should he run into her. Most importantly, he wanted to find Kiba, talk to the dog-nin about all this. Why was Kiba not at the base camp? Where was he, and when did he leave?

Replacing the last scroll on the shelf, Neji felt, more than saw, an explosion. A moment later after he'd activated the Byakugan, he saw a cloud of flame rising into the sky from a point near the edge of the city.

Behind him, Itachi shivered slightly, rustling the scroll-paper.

"Cold?" Neji asked.

"No, I am fine," Itachi said after a moment.

"Neji!"

Both Itachi and Neji looked over at Shizune, bouncing into the library. This was the first time Neji had seen her out of the lab, and the first time Itachi had been within hearing distance of her. He was looking at her with interest, but she seemed to pay him no mind until she got close. "Shizune-san," Neji said politely, stepping to the side. "This is Itachi."

"Oh! A pleasure!" she said, nervous laughter bubbling out of her. Neji thought it strange until he realized _If I came face-to-face with a S-Class missing-nin manifested by a body of water, I'd be nervous, too._ The thought made him smile, and he caught a reproachful look from Shizune before she perked up again.

"There'll be no need to go on with what I suggested!" she said. "I've got a better idea."

"Oh? What's that?" Secretly, Neji was glad. He couldn't do what he did a second time.

"Well…" She glanced at Itachi. Neji caught her meaning.

"Itachi, Shizune-san and I need to discuss something in private. Could you please leave us a moment?"

Itachi nodded solemnly and went off down the long shelving row, disappearing around the corner. Shizune led Neji in the opposite direction, and leaned against the doorway to the room.

"We're going to go out on the lake and you are going to blast it with chakra," she said finally, breathless.

"What?"

"Pouring pure chakra into the lake caused it to react this way. I want to know what a focused point of chakra—razor-sharp and cutting like that of the Jyuuken—would do. Most of the activity has been from the center of the lake, you see—we'd go out in a boat…"

"Break the sanction—?"

"In the name of science, I think it'd be admissible."

Neji stared at her. This wasn't like Shizune—she was confident, yes, and bright, but that statement had bordered on ethical lines, and Shizune would never had crossed them. That got into territory that Orochimaru had strayed into with his experiments on shinobi—

And then he realized that one of Shizune's hands was tucked out of sight on the hallway side of the jamb, hanging as if clasping someone's hand.

"Who's there with you?" he asked. Shizune paled, and backed away down the hall toward her lab.

"Well, I'll leave you to consider the experiment!" she said in that unnaturally high voice. "Contact me with your answer!"

As she retreated, he heard two sets of footsteps on the floorboards, until the door slammed.

* * *

Tsunade was at her desk when the messenger-bearer flew into her window. This was the only thing authorized to come to her directly and bypass the others, because of the nature of the mission. Nobody would suspect a bird like this one. Pulling the scroll pouch off the bird's leg, Tsunade focused her chakra briefly and the bird disintegrated into a puff of chakra. _Neji's chakra, _she thought. _Always like a calm bay._

There were two scrolls, she discovered; one was Neji's report, in his precise handwriting—and the other…

Tsunade sat back in her chair. It was Kakashi's post-mortem report, detailing his death. As she read it, thought…it was like the pieces fit together, but the picture they created was distorted and wrong.

"Panic pills?" she murmured. "Nervous breakdown…?"

No, this wasn't right. The report was in Anko's hand, she'd have to ask when they returned, or send it back with her report confirmation.

Neji's report was concise, as all his reports were. Still, she had the feeling he was hiding something from her, something important. There were points where there was a darker dot of ink at the start of a character, as if he'd paused to think about what he said next. Indicative of Neji, but…

She sighed, and picked up three black-edged scrolls. There had been the death of a great man.


	7. Chapter 6: Conversations

**A/N: Sorry for being gone so long, I got in a writing funk after NaNoWriMo (Check that story, 'A Gentle Rain', out sometime, it's Minato/Kushina and I'm rather proud of it). As an apology I am putting together an ItaNeji fanmix of sorts. I'll put the address in the next update and on my profile. Thank you!**

* * *

  
Chapter VI: Conversations

It had all happened so fast.

One minute, Naruto had been a happy, laughing young man, the next he had been sobbing, eyes sparkling with tears rather than the joy that she'd come to love in him. Sasuke hadn't shown the same display of grief, but she could see him shaking with it as he held and cradled Naruto against him, stroking the blonde's hair with a gloved hand. The reason for their despair was a scroll that now lay in the grass beside Naruto's knee. It was a black scroll, bearing the Hokage's seal.

Everyone with friendships, everyone with family within the shinobi lived in fear of the black scroll, because it was only sent out when someone related to you (and teacher-student ties were often just as deep, if not moreso, than familial ties) in some way had died. The black scroll meant that your lover, your friend, your teacher, your child, would not be returning home under their own power. They would be returning home in ashes.

Sakura came over later that day, eyes red-rimmed. In her hand, she clasped another black scroll, and without a word Hinata took her to where she had settled Naruto and Sasuke in her own antechamber. It was a serene place, opening out into a rock garden; Hinata set out another cushion for her and brought another cup of tea, offering it to Sakura with both hands. She poured more for Naruto and Sasuke, refusing to give them sake; getting drunk was not the way to handle it. Of course, Hinata thought as she left them alone to talk, she'd rather they get drunk here where she could take care of them, rather than out somewhere where they could get hurt. Oh, they were two ANBU and a very capable tokubetsu jounin, but Hinata would be worried for them. Grieving shinobi could become irrational when drunk, even if they weren't normally.

A few hours later, she did cave in to their requests, and brought sake, and watched as they proceeded to get blissfully drunk. And after, she watched as Sakura and Sasuke half-walked, half-stumbled to the room set aside for the two ANBU as they rotated on and off-duty, and helped Naruto into the spare futon in her room. He was grinning as he wept, big tears that wrenched her heart from her.

"Was a grea' man, Kakashi-sensei," Naruto was mumbling as Hinata stripped his mask and flak jacket off him. "Favored Sasuke-bastard, but was jus' tryin' to make him see sense…but he was a grea' man…"

"He was," Hinata murmured, trying to get him settled enough to sleep. She'd already made him drink plenty of water and washed his face, but as she made to stand and get into her own bed, he pulled her down against him. Her heart skipped a beat, feeling his warm, strong body through the blankets.

"You're beautiful, yannow that?" Naruto mumbled, petting her hair messily. "Really, really beautiful. Always thought so, even though back when we were kids you were kinda weird…"

_Thank you, Naruto,_ she thought icily, but could only squeak as he wrapped his arms gracelessly around her back, cuddling. He reeked of the sake, and she intended to only let him tuck her under his arm for a moment. But in that moment he was asleep, and with his warmth next to her, she was too.

Once, during the night, Sasuke woke up and crawled away from Sakura's warm, naked form under the blankets, sitting on the edge of the verandah looking out over the garden. It was not quite as good an angle as from Hinata's room (he could hear Naruto's snores from there, and smiled thinly), and a bush partially blocked his view, but it was good and quiet enough for thinking.

He was glad for the drink. It dulled memories, thoughts that he should not revisit but did, every night. Rubbing his temples, Sasuke stared out over the moonlit garden for a very long time before tottering back into bed and falling into a dreamless sleep.

In the morning, Team Seven woke with what seemed like a collective headache. Hinata dished out remedies quietly, medical ninjutsu not doing much for headaches in general. Naruto seemed especially quiet, and she took care to look after him. He smiled at her, but it was a shadow of what it usually was, and he pulled her aside a moment, as Sasuke and Sakura talked by themselves.

"I'm sorry for last night," he said, unusually humble. "I shouldn't have gotten in your space like that."

"Naruto…" she smiled. "It's all right."

He gave her a small smile, and they rejoined the others.

---

Neji lay in the dark a long time; after a while, all sight and sound faded away. There was a noise like horses running overhead, and then he opened his eyes suddenly. The bed seemed bigger; he looked around, and saw that Itachi was gone somewhere. He touched the pillow where the Uchiha's head had lain; it was cold. He was about to sit up and call out for him when he heard footsteps coming toward him, and he calmed inexplicably. There was no press of chakra; it was not a foe.

"Kakashi?"

"Yes, it's me, Neji. Don't turn on the light, there's no need, and it's better to keep these words in the dark."

"But you're dead…" Neji closed his eyes. Death itself was no longer constant in this accursed place.

"Don't worry about it. It's my voice—you've heard me before, haven't you?" Movement out of the corner of his eye, but out of trust Neji did not activate his Byakugan. As Kakashi had said, there wasn't any need.

"Why did you take the cyanide pills?"

"You arrived late; if you hadn't, I wouldn't have been forced to. I don't regret it, though."

"I must be asleep." Neji rubbed his eyes, wondering if the stress of the situation had finally gotten to him.

"You think you're dreaming still, as you did with Itachi."

"Where is he?"

"Why would I know where Itachi is?"

Neji's brows furrowed. "I think you do."

"You geniuses are all the same, you all think too much. Stop thinking, and let me talk."

"I want Itachi too."

"You can't have both him and me, Neji, and there are some things I must tell you that are very important. Why should you care about Itachi anyway?"

"We are together."

"You're afraid of him."

"No."

"He disgusts you."

Neji made a soft noise in his throat; Kakashi, sadly, was right. This creature that walked and talked and wore Itachi's skin was enough like him to pass, to satisfy Neji's need for his lover, but Neji knew he was not the man he'd once asked to stay to watch the falling stars. "What do you want with him?"

"Save it for yourself, but don't pity him. He'll always be twenty-four years old, Neji, you have to know that."

"What do you want, Kakashi?"

"Shizune's convinced Anko that you've been deceiving both of them. She's come up with a way to permanently get rid of your visitors; whatever they've asked you to do to the lake, it's a cover for building this device that will eliminate them."

"Where's Itachi?"

"Didn't you hear me, I came to warn you!"

"Where is he?"

"I don't know. Be careful; you can't trust anyone anymore, not even Itachi. And if all else fails, you can always follow my example!"

"You're not Kakashi."

"Then who am I, a dream?" Kakashi, who was not Kakashi, laughed. "If so, then this is a dream within a dream, Neji."

"You just don't know who you are."

"And how do you know who _you_ are, Neji? You've held onto this for six years, now, isn't it? You've stayed the same bitter man the whole process made you into, and you've never let go of it."

"Seeing your lover killed in front of you tends to do that," Neji said, anger building in his chest.

"Maybe it's because you don't _want _to let go, Neji. Maybe it's because…"

Neji put his hands over his ears, eyes squeezing shut. He was four years old again and they were telling him his father died, the seal was being branded onto his forehead, Itachi's stump of a neck was spurting blood…

"…we are the cause of our own suffering," a distant voice was saying. These beings behave as an amplifier to our own thoughts, creating a problem we are not equipped to solve, as any attempt to understand why this has happened is blocked by our own conscious mind. Where there are no men, there is no motive available to man. The only way to proceed here at Toki Lake would be to either destroy our thoughts or destroy the manifestation of our thoughts, and since we cannot destroy our thoughts, the solution must be to somehow totally destroy their manifestation, an act that would be tantamount to murder—"

Neji stretched out his arm—the bed was empty. He'd fallen asleep again. "Kakashi?"

The voice cut off suddenly, and there was the sound of rustling cloth.

"Kakashi, you follow me in my dreams?"

"It's I, Neji."

"Itachi? But what about Kakashi?"

"You said he was dead, Neji."

"But he spoke to me…he was here." But Neji was already drifting back into sleep. Itachi said something, but he took a deep breath, and was gone. In the morning, he looked under the bed for where he'd hidden the recording scroll, but it was gone. Itachi was in the bathroom, and Neji got up, padding into the bathroom to join him in the shower.

"Have you seen a recording scroll? It must have rolled under the bed."

"There was a pile of things under the bed, I put it on the table."

It wasn't there when Neji looked, long hair dripping down his back and at his heels. "It's missing, Itachi."

"Is that all you are concerned about?"

Neji sighed, and replaced all the neatly folded and organized clothes and gear. "You're right, it's useless to get worked up about it." Anything to avoid a fight.

Itachi's behavior changed over breakfast; he seemed to be making an effort to keep Neji smiling and laughing, but there was such a look in his eyes that Neji raised an eyebrow after Itachi had made a very, very rare attempt at a joke.

"Is something the matter?"

A dark look came over the Uchiha's face. "Why should you care? They are not real feelings anyway."

They spent the day looking around the dead city; Neji came across more evidence of fights, some of the signs going back many years. There was no graffiti, none of the usual dereliction that came with an abandoned city; no evidence of squatters at all. Rogue ninja, not of the variety that Itachi belonged to, would often take refuge in cities such as these, use them as bases.

Itachi trailed behind him all day, seemingly in a sulking fit, although it could hardly be called that. He was sullen and quiet all day long, whatever he was, and after dinner (Itachi only picked at his food, pushing it around his plate and not even eating a bite), he heaved a sigh. "Neji, what is happening to us?"

Neji made a frustrated sound. "Everything's fine. Why?"

"I want to…talk."

"I'm listening."

"Not like this."

"Then how do you propose we talk, Itachi?"

"You're not being fair."

Neji forced a smile, but it wasn't convincing to Itachi, because he got up and turned his back. "Tell me the truth."

"Why should I lie?"

"I already know I don't remember how I got here, and I want you to tell me—but what if you don't know?" That last was spoken softly, as though he was talking to himself. "But if you do…you will tell me, even if it's later? You will at least give me a chance?"

"A chance? What are you talking about, Itachi?"

"If you can't say, you only need to tell me."

"I'm not hiding anything," Neji said defensively.

"All right."

Neji didn't want to end it on that note; it would hang over their heads for days. "Itachi, you know I love you—"

"You love me?" the words were nearly spat out. "I'd rather you hate me."

For a moment, the Hyuuga's heart stopped. "Itachi. _What are you talking about_?"

"No, don't say anything more!"

They cleared the table in silence and went back to their room. Neji lay down next to his lover, but Itachi had rolled onto his side, and with a sigh, Neji pushed up against his back and closed his eyes.

---

In the middle of the night he was wide awake; the door was ajar, and there was a high-pitched whining sound coming from down the hall. A smaller laboratory had been put together down here after Shizune had taken over the upstairs one, and it was from there the sound was coming. Neji ran down the hall and pushed open the door, and the temperature dropped. A vapor filled the room, his breath misted, condensed, and fluttered to the ground, and stirred over a body jerking on the floor. It was wearing black pants, and had long black hair.

"Itachi—!" Neji snatched him up, hauling the heavier man back along the corridor to their room, putting him in one of the chairs that comprised the sparse furnishings. Itachi's hands plucked at his skin, their chill a burn against his warm skin, his breath freezing on Neji's skin and clothes and hair. His face contorted with pain, a layer of blood covered Itachi's chin. His hair and lashes were brushed with white ice crystals.

"Oxygen…" the lab had contained bottles of liquid oxygen. Itachi must have swallowed it, and burned away his throat and lungs and most of his esophagus. He was breathing with the sound of tearing paper; every breath ripped tissues apart in side him. He was dying, and Neji could think of nothing to save him.

_He's dying, and there's nothing—I can't even warm him up quickly enough—he's got no lungs, I can't perform an emergency tracheotomy…_

Panic grew inside his chest; Itachi's breath rattled in his chest, and he convulsed. Neji had to hold him down to keep him from knocking his head and slipping into unconsciousness. Wide, dark blue eyes filled with a never-before-seen terror stared at Neji, blinked. A drop of blood melted and ran down his cheek, disappearing into the inky black hair that had become wet and tangled with the melting ice. Putting his ear to Itachi's chest, Neji could not even count the beats, they were so fast.

"Neji!"

He took the Uchiha's hand, and gasped at the strength in the other's grip. Itachi convulsed and again Neji pressed him back down to the chair. He was pouring with sweat, weak in the knees, and gasping for breath just as loud as Itachi was. Pulling back once the fit was over, he looked into the horrific mask of Itachi's face.

"Neji…how long…?"

Pink foam dribbled out of his lips, and Neji hastily wiped it away. Itachi kept breathing, and the harsh rasp was only a wheeze, then a rumble, then a soft sigh, as it had always been. Color returned to Itachi's cheeks.

He opened his eyes, and looked at Neji, then sat up and looked around the room. "It didn't work," he murmured softly, and looked back at Neji. The Hyuuga couldn't help it; he was staring. "Why are you looking at me like that?" Itachi whispered, and then grabbed Neji's shoulders, shaking him hard and all but screamed, "Why are you looking at me like that, Neji?" Still, Neji said nothing.

Itachi let him go and stared at his hands, fingers, flexed them; they were functional as they had always been, calloused and scarred. "Is this me?"

Neji found the strength to speak. "Itachi?"

He stumbled, staring at Neji without really seeing him. "Itachi…? But I am not him. Who am I, and who are you?" His eyes widened, and lit up, and an insane smile lit his face. "And you, Neji, maybe you…"

Neji had backed up against the wall, and was now flat against it. The smile disappeared.

"No, you fear me. I cannot take it anymore, I…I didn't know, I don't understand, it's impossible." His hands clenched in his wet, matted hair. "What else could I think, except that I am Itachi! It's not an act, Neji, I swear it is not!"

Neji stepped away from the wall, moved to put his arms around the Uchiha, but Itachi pushed him away.

"No, don't touch me, I know I disgust you. I am not the one you love."

They fought, and Neji was hard-pressed to keep Itachi from killing him with a blow; without chakra, the Uchiha was limited to taijutsu, but even that he had a mastery at and it took all the Hyuuga's own considerable skill to keep him at bay until they both collapsed, breathless and sweaty. Itachi finally laid his head on Neji's leg, eyes closed tightly.

"Neji…what do we have to do to stop this?"

"Shut up!"

"Can it be done?"

"Itachi, please…"

"I tried…no, don't touch me, I disgust you—and myself, I disgust myself."

"Do not dare try to kill yourself again, Itachi."

"I am not Itachi!" At a look from Neji, a tired, angry look, however, the Uchiha subsided, head falling back to Neji's thigh. "But if you want me to be him, I will be. But you exist, and I do not. I know it was your love for him that made you treat me so well at the beginning. I couldn't remember how I came to be sitting by your bed that first day…everything was misty, a haze in my mind. You were the only thing I knew. But the way you treated me…and then the library, in the library I read some things, and then I found that recorder-scroll by the man—Kakashi?"

"Yes, Kakashi…"

"He explained everything. Although I still do not see that there is an end; there is no switch to turn us off. I heard enough to realize that I wasn't Itachi, I wasn't even human. I was only an instrument of the lake, here to study you. But…" he got a faraway look on his face. "That isn't right either. It's not the lake, really…but it's what's in the lake…"

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm here to study your reactions—manifested from your memory, or your imagination—but in this case your memory, an echo of someone deeply rooted in your psyche that you would be comfortable with. That's why we don't eat or sleep, and why we have to follow you around everywhere you go. And…Neji, there's something else I must ask you."

"Yes?"

"Do I…look very much like him?"

Neji looked down to meet the blue-black eyes he knew so well, trace the thin line on the throat with a fingertip. "You look exactly like him, but…different. Now all I see is you. But if I saw him, I might not be able to love you."

"Why not?"

"Because of what I did to him."

"Did you treat him badly?"

"No…but I am the reason he got—"

"Don't say any more."

"Why not?"

"So that you will not forget that it is me here with you, not him."


	8. Chapter 7: The Deep

**A/N: The link for the fanmix and a tracklisting will be in my profile as soon as the stupid file uploads. I will use Sendspace and Megaupload and will upload it in a single zip file. Single songs are available, just PM me with a request. **

* * *

Chapter VII: The Deep

* * *

Golden light was streaming through the windows of the house; it was midmorning, and they were just getting up and had been eating silently. Itachi's hair hung wet and limp down his back; they had showered after waking up, and Neji had carefully worked all the tangles out of his lover's black hair. They had avoided talking about the events of the night before, but he could see it every time he looked into Itachi's eyes. To Neji, even if this man wasn't really Itachi, he felt like him, and he acted like him, and Neji was stubbornly going to keep doing as he pleased. "Itachi, I have to go talk to Anko."

He looked up, pushed his bangs out of his face. "Why?"

"It's about the experiment Shizune was planning with me, only I don't know what to do about it and what she's really working on, and I must go alone."

"If it does not take too long."

"It's bound to take a long time. You couldn't just wait in the hallway?"

"I will try, but what if I lose control?"

"Then you do, we'll work something out."

Itachi had gone pale, but nodded tightly. "Very well."

"Perhaps it only works if we're close to the lake. When I leave, I'm taking you with me."

Itachi pushed his food around his plate; he hadn't touched any of it, as usual, and wasn't going to humor Neji with trying to eat. "The man who gave me his appearance is dead where you are from. You say he was also a criminal. How would it be?"

Neji looked down at his own plate; it was still covered in food. He didn't have too much of an appetite himself. "Difficult, but it doesn't matter to me. I am taking you home with me when I leave."

Itachi smiled, and took a deep breath. "When you to meet Anko…if I can hear your voice, it might be easier. I do not have to be close enough to hear what you are saying, just the sound."

They passed the laboratory downstairs; most of the ice crystals had melted, but glass fragments from the container still littered the ground beneath the row of similar containers. Neji shuddered. He wished it all had been a terrible dream, but then he would have to wonder if he had been asleep this entire time.

At the bottom banister of the staircase, Itachi stopped and gave Neji a little push with his fingertips; his face was drawn, mouth set in a hard line, eyes impassive. Suddenly, Neji began to think that everything in the world was not worth the price Itachi would be paying right now—for him. Looking back, he saw the other leaning against the wall, arms crossed and eyes closed. With that bitter taste in his mouth, he kept walking around the bend of the hallway and knocked on Anko's door.

She came out and leaned against the jamb, but said nothing. Neji cleared his throat. "When will Shizune be ready to conduct this experiment?"

"She has to finish up some initial experiments and then she'll be ready. We will go out on the lake tomorrow."

Silence lengthened again between them. Anko shifted her position, dropped her hands, still staring at him with one eyebrow cocked. "Is there something you need to tell me?"

"Itachi tried to kill himself. He drank liquid oxygen."

Anko appeared unsurprised. "And?"

"It didn't work."

"Does he know that he came once before, and that you—"

"No, of course not!"

"Then what do you want to do, Neji? Leave?" Anko laughed. "Go on, leave. You'll conduct one of our experiments for us."

"What do you mean?" He was wary of the expression on her face, the sadist's grin that had made her so very famous as an interrogator.

"Do you know why Kiba left the base?" she asked. "Do you know why he wanders the woods around here?"

"No…"

"Think about that. He's outside the influence of the lake's power out there. And when the transformation happens, what would you do? Come back for another?" She grinned horribly.

Neji closed his eyes. _An outside source of energy… he'd crumble if taken outside its reach._ "Nonetheless, there must be some way…"

"Do you want to feed chakra into him the rest of your life, just to keep him alive? You know what kind of strain that puts on your chakra system, and while you might be a Hyuuga with oh-so-superior chakra control, you can't keep bleeding chakra into him. And how do you think his dear brother would react?"

"Well, as this isn't Itachi…"

"But it is, in looks and mannerisms, and that's all that matters." Anko snorted. "Itachi died at his brother's hands in state-sanctioned fratricide. Let him stay dead."

Neji heard a soft sound, like a sigh, but he was too angry now to think on it. "And what about your sensei?" Neji spat. "Will you stay here in this accursed place, just to keep him on your leash and let him follow you around like a dog? Is that the Orochimaru you knew when you were a girl?"

"You don't know anything!" Anko snarled. "You don't know what it's like having him back in a form I remember, not some stranger wearing his face and grin!"

"Yes, Anko," Neji's voice was bitter. "I very much do know what it's like to have someone back like that. I think your judgment is clouded in this respect, and in my next report—"

"You're going to do what, tell Tsunade that you and two top-ranking nin are being visited by specters from their pasts?" To his surprise, her eyes were bright with tears. "Do you think she'd believe you for a second? You'd be twenty-six, and your career would be over and your crazy, fucked-up family would lock you away and keep you sedated until you died a bitter and unhappy man."

"I thought truth and honesty were virtues of a shinobi from Konoha. You've become just like your sensei, Anko."

"_Shut the fuck up you don't know him!_" Far from being in tears now, Anko was purple in the face with rage. And somewhere nearby, inside the room, there was another little noise. Neji glared at her.

"How long has he been standing there, Anko?"

"Get the hell away from me!" she screamed, and flew inside her room, slamming the door in his face. Neji was about to shove the door open and demand to continue their talk, but knew it would be fruitless and possibly get him killed, anyway. With a sigh, he turned and walked back down the hallway.

Itachi had sat down at some point and was huddled against the wall, knees drawn up to his chin and looking for all the world like a lost child. He sprang up when Neji approached, a look of triumph sneaking around his impassive mask. "It was not so difficult," he said. "Perhaps it will get easier with time."

"Yes, perhaps." Neji was distracted though as they got back to their room and Itachi sat him down in the bath, strong, calloused hands running over his equally scarred skin and lathering every inch, and when he got to Neji's front his hands strayed southward. Neji came out of his thoughts, arms wrapping around Itachi's neck as he smoothed something different over Neji's cock and slid it inside him neatly, and their lovemaking was as a dream to him.

Afterward, they lay in bed together, simple touches communicating everything. Eventually, Itachi tucked his head under Neji's chin and went to sleep, while the Hyuuga stayed awake a long time, lost in thought.

---

"Neji, is it the experiment on the lake that is on your mind?"

"What?"

Neji came out of his stupor; he hadn't really slept, but rather drifted on his thoughts, staring at the ceiling. Now he blinked, rewetting his eyes, and looked down at what he could see of Itachi's head. The other's breath was warm against his throat, and the fingers of his left hand were still wrapped gently around Neji's right shoulder, holding onto him tightly.

"You have not slept yet."

"How do you know?"

"Your breathing changes."

Neji sighed, and stroked Itachi's hair. It was still damp from the bath, but soft and a soothing, familiar touch. Familiarity was something he desperately needed right now, and even if this wasn't really his old lover, he was a source of comfort, something Neji had been denying himself for long enough.

"If you cannot tell me, I will understand. We shinobi keep many secrets." There was a hesitation before Itachi had said 'shinobi', as though he was unsure if the term still applied to him or not.

"You are right, it's the experiment." Neji sighed again, still staring at the ceiling and petting Itachi's hair. "I'm just not understanding what they want to accomplish with it. It is one point of chakra in one tiny part of a huge lake. What difference will it make?"

"They must have a theory."

"Oh they have a theory for everything but the tides," Neji said, bitterly. "And only because the tides are explained by something else. Just ask them, and they'll rattle off any set of things that might be explained by it. And if nothing happens, they'll say we've been wasting our time on it, and say we've been deceived by science." He sighed. "It's like wandering through a library, where all the scrolls are in a different language and unmarked besides. So much knowledge, but so unattainable." He closed his eyes. "I must sleep…"

In the morning, he woke up and everything was clearer and brighter, a golden sun dawning bright through the blinds. After a moment's hesitation, he pulled a blank scroll toward him and wrote his report, the entire truth, not caring how insane it all sounded, and sent it before he could think twice. It was better the truth get out than the others here hide it when, or if, they returned.

He dressed warmly, and Itachi did the same; it would be cold out on the lake. He didn't like the idea of Itachi going out with them, but for all the older man's attempts, he could not stay out of sight and hearing range for more than five minutes. He had been ready to be locked up somewhere, but Neji had flatly refused, and Anko and Shizune had grudgingly agreed that he could come along. As they got in the little motorized boat, he noticed neither of them had their visitors with them, and ground his teeth.

When they reached a point out on the lake, partway between a small island and the boat launch, Shizune killed the motor. She was looking more composed than he remembered seeing her since his arrival—could it only have been barely a week ago? So much had changed.

"Here, she said, holding out a recording scroll to him; he took it, looking at her quizzically. "It's been fine-tuned to capture things we can't with the naked eye," she explained. "Things even your Byakugan would miss, as they wouldn't be chakra in nature." She turned away, recording on her own scroll for scientific posterity, he supposed, and turned to Itachi. His eyes were faraway, staring at the trees on the island in the center of the lake, but he looked back at Neji and nodded.

"Are you ready?" Anko asked. Neji knelt, hanging over the edge of the boat and looking down into the water. It was murky; he could only see a few feet down before everything bled to blue. Activating his Byakugan, he could not see much more; it was a dark, lifeless spot, and they the only four points of life, aside from the brightness of the trees and the island that seemed to pulse unnaturally in the dull expanse of the water around it.

"As I'll ever be," he muttered, calculating the angle. What he was doing would have a kickback of some kind, and no matter how he looked at it, it would take them broadside. They would be so close to the point of impact though that perhaps it wouldn't matter too much.

"Then whenever you're ready."

He looked back at Itachi again, before gathering as much chakra as he could in the palm of his hand (the recording scroll would say that it became visible as a bright, pure light) and when it had reached the fever pitch he'd wanted, slammed it down into the water.

With his Byakugan activated, Neji could see what disappeared in a flash for the others; he could see the chakra spiral out, down deep into the water as though being drawn from his body to some other entity in the lake, and for a moment, he could see the Sharingan flicker in Itachi's eyes. Both of these events made absolutely no sense to the Hyuuga; there was nothing in the lake, nothing he could see anyway, and if this copy of Itachi had no chakra system, there was no way for his Sharingan to activate at all.

Waves from his hand's entry into the lake slapped against the side of the boat, his sleeve was soaked, but nothing happened. They waited, holding their breath.

"Perhaps the experiment did not work," Shizune said, voice soft.

"Nothing happened, of course it didn't." Anko was edgy, hands clenched on her knees.

"No, it was drawn down into the lake." Neji leaned over, looking down into the depths, straining his Byakugan although he felt distinctly light-headed from chakra depletion. His hands shook as he reached one down into the water; it slid over his skin like silk, like a lover's fingertips, and he shivered. It was eerie, it was—

"Neji!"

The shout from Itachi behind him barely registered before Neji looked up and was picked up by the huge tentacles, made out of the water of the lake, that plucked him from the boat and lifted him high into the air. He was strangely calm, though; the tentacles, oddly enough, had a familiar feel, like they were of someone he'd known long ago and in another world, and he looked down their length without fear.

Itachi was screaming in the boat below, anguished screams that didn't fit him at all, but slowly it fell away so that the Hyuuga could not even hear the wind rushing past his ears. It was then that he realized that it was because he was encased in water, but the fact he could still breathe was totally normal to him. It made sense.

And then he was hurtling forward, down the thickest of the water-tentacles and down past the surface of the lake, into its depths. A light illuminated the water around him as he was thrown down to the lake's bottom in the protective covering of water. No fish flitted around them, none of the weird creatures said to inhabit such depths. Just himself, the light, and the silence.

He was rushing forward again, toward a dark cleft in the lake's silt-covered bottom and then down it. The water was no longer really cushioning him so much as pushing him along, and he closed his eyes and everything went black.

---

When he woke, he was in a dark void, and he was laying on his stomach. Something familiar was against his cheek, something that triggered memories from far away and long ago, and his hands as he got his equilibrium and sat up—at least, he thought it was sitting up, with the way his weight was balanced. With no reference point in the darkness, it was hard to tell.

He felt lost, more than he had in his entire life; Neji quickly found that the Byakugan did nothing but show him more of the same; a black, empty void completely barren of any sign of life.

No, there was a point where he'd felt lost like he did now, Neji thought, as he sat in this endless blackness. Right after they'd gotten caught; he and Itachi had been put into cells next to each other, and the whole time, it seemed, he'd been screaming for the Uchiha. But never had there been any answering call, any indication that Itachi acknowledged him or cared. All he had been looking for was an answer. He'd never gotten it. Just like those horrifying days in the cell, when he could hear the blows falling against his lover's body and could all but see the bruises forming on the tanned skin, Neji curled his knees to his chin, and hid his face from the world.

And then he was falling again, and he cried out and great bubbles escaped his mouth. Frantically Neji tried to swim up against the current (that was his_air_, minutes of his life bubbling so merrily out of his lips and expanding into the great infinity that he'd been dropped into) , but was pulled downward inexorably. The recording scroll, secured around his neck, whacked him in the face. He grabbed it, pulling it out of his eyes, and saw the lights of the city below him.

"They're alive," he murmured, awed. He did not think that he could not speak underwater. Everything was clear and precise. Looking up, he saw stars, clear and bright, multitudes of them. He was drifting near the largest; it was young and hot, still emerging from the clouds of cosmic dust surrounding it. In that moment, he felt so small, insignificant compared to these. Neji closed his eyes.

Then he was hurtled forward again, over the city, until the lights became one light and he squeezed his eyes even more tightly shut, trying desperately to keep his equilibrium, until everything once more went black and he knew nothing.

---

He woke with the same sensation under his cheek, except this time, when he opened his eyes, he saw grass, and a gentle slope that opened onto a cliff overlooking a village he knew well. If he were to go to that cliff edge and look down, he would see the carved faces of the five Hokages of the Leaf. He was on a grassy overlook above the Hokage Monument, and he was not alone.

Out of the corner of his eye when he had awoken, Neji had detected movement among the trees. Even his sharp eyes couldn't make out its form; it seemed fluid, constantly moving about as though drifting with unseen and unfelt currents. As it got closer to him, though, it seemed to solidify and take on a form, and that was when he stood up suddenly, staring with wide, white eyes at the man who stood before him.

He knew instantly this was no copy generated by some nameless, formless being trapped in a remote lake; this was Itachi, the man who had first fought him into a limp stupor and had surprised Neji by gently taking him by the campfire; this was the man who had snuck past guards and brothers to climb in an invitingly open window to spend terribly short hours with him. This was the real thing, and a great sense of relief swept over him so suddenly that his world tilted and he reached out blindly. Strong arms, delicate and scarred hands caught him, and Neji pressed as tightly as he could to Itachi's front.

"I missed you," he whispered, all his barriers gone, having been besieged so long that they crumbled as though made of sticks. Arms wrapped around him warmly, and Neji curled his fingers into a familiar coat, inhaling the faint smell of wood smoke that always seemed to hover around Itachi.

"I know." That familiar voice—and it was Itachi's voice, he was sure of it absolutely—rumbled through his cheek and into his ears, and a hand stroked his hair gently. "I am sorry nothing could be done about it."

"Are you going to come back with me?"

Itachi shook his head. "I cannot. I am needed here. There is much work left yet, before anything else can be done."

"But I need—"

"I know." The Uchiha caught his eye, and Neji calmed, the imploring tone dying on his lips. "But you have a task now too, Neji."

"You said you had work to do? On what?"

"I never realized how much humanity has left to learn," he said, looking out over the village, frozen in some time of its recent history. "We are working together, regardless of affiliation, family, or skill, and helping to learn." Something like the ghost of a smile turned the corners of Itachi's mouth up, in a way the being back on the lake never could imitate correctly. "This is just one step, for you and for the others. You will return home, and tell of what you have seen and learned to others. Some will understand, and go forward with you, some will not. In time, you will all take another."

"So I will come back here soon?"

A rare laugh, the same rich tone as Itachi's voice. "Neji," he said, touching the other's cheek gently, almost delicately. "I do not want to see you here again for a very long time." The fingers turned Neji's head up to look at the sky.

Shooting stars, bright streaks of light in the sky; dozens of them a minute. The meteor shower they had never gotten to see, streaming overhead toward the horizon. Itachi, the real Itachi was close to him, the solid warmth of his body warming him wholly for the first time in years. The light overhead was brilliant, and as he watched (it could have been hours they stood there together, the time passed in strange ways here he knew, somehow) it seemed to grow brighter and brighter, until—

---

"Catch him!"

Neji inhaled deeply, coughing out water, spitting and hacking it up out of his lungs. He could feel strong arms around him still, and leaned back against them, shivering; it was chilly out, and being soaked to the bone wasn't helping.

Itachi yanked his coat off and wrapped it around Neji, holding him tightly and refusing to let Anko or Shizune near him for the rest of the boat ride back to the launch. At some point, Neji stirred and asked, "How long was I gone?"

He felt Itachi's chin, pressed against the side of his head, tilt down slightly. "Gone?"

Neji looked over at Anko. "Yes, how long was I in the lake for?"

Anko gave him a strange look. "Neji…you were never in the lake at all. The things just held you there for a moment and then all of a sudden let go of you. Itachi was fucking flipping out the entire time you were up there, though."

The arms around him squeezed a bit tighter. Neji closed his eyes, mind whirling, and went to sleep for a very long time.

---

Tsunade set the scroll down and rubbed her temples, staring at the neat writing on the paper. It was void of any hesitation marks, as the last one had been; no evidence of Neji stopping to think about his words before writing them, no dots of ink where he'd rested the tip of his brush before writing.

It sounded so insane, so implausible; the lake, or something in the lake, was the source of manifestations? It read the guarded and murky minds of shinobi (ones as unstable as Anko, no less) and made a physical replica of some aspect of their subconscious. But she had never known Neji to be a liar, either, and unless he had finally completely lost it, she doubted he ever would lie. But, his… visitor, he had called them. Visitors, as though they came and went as they pleased.

Neji had suggested sending in additional backup, as Anko and Shizune were not of a mind to leave their posts, and he doubted his own resolve. She leaned forward, rereading one line. _Being faced with Uchiha Itachi, at least a reasonable facsimile of him, reawakened memories of the trial, but also memories that were more dear to me; it is thus with Mitarashi Anko and Shizune, and in my opinion makes removing them from the area much more dangerous._

A part of her agreed with him; to see her old teammates again, to hear their voices and feel them as they were when they were all young and Orochimaru hadn't turned his mind to the roots of things, before Jiraiya had become the quietly sad man he was… If she knew them again then, she didn't know how she would be able to handle leaving them. Tsunade leaned back, resting her chin in her palm. It had been a difficult decision to make; she had seen how much the Uchiha had meant to Neji, how anguished he was; the official verdict had been a complete lie. No genjutsu could imitate love completely.

She pulled a scroll toward her and wrote up mission orders for an ANBU squad. It was time for everyone to come home.


	9. Chapter 8: Victory

It seemed in this place, Neji was always sleeping or waking up, and every time the first happened, he woke to a brilliant golden light. After the first day back, when he was still so caught up in the fact that he was_alive_ and he had met Itachi again that everything seemed brighter and sharper; after all that wore off and it was very obvious that things had changed, and he began to dread the golden light of morning.

Things with the man who shared his bed had taken a decided turn for the worse. It iddn't manifest in fights, or anything like that; Uchiha Itachi (even a copy of him) and Hyuuga Neji did not _argue_ or _fight_ as normal couples would, nor were there any real harsh words exchanged between them. It was not that kind of 'worse'. Instead, where they had been tacit with each other before, they were even more so now.

"You've changed, Neji."

"Hm?"

"Since that incident on the lake. You've changed."

Neji could only smile, sensing it was a bit sad, and stroke Itachi's hair. The other's quirks had not changed one bit, and his eyes had closed slowly as he'd leaned into the petting heavily, one hand coming up to rest on Neji's upper arm to keep it where it was. In the Hyuuga's mind's eye, he could see that flash of red and black, of the Sharingan, and closed his own eyes.

In the intervening weeks, Neji had come to some of his own conclusions, especially since the moment he returned, the jutsus and the instruments that had been placed on and in the lake picked up a dramatic spike in underwater activity. The currents increased in speed and temperature; by the island near the middle of the lake, whirlpools formed and disappeared at random. Neji knew there was something in the lake; he had no conclusive evidence, no facts, nothing to base his thoughts on except faith and his experiences, which three onlookers debunked. He'd even drilled Itachi, after he'd woken in the middle of the night from a dream filled with light and gentle touches; despite the other's determination to be loyal to him, and to support him in everything, Itachi could not substantiate his claims.

At first, this caused him considerable trouble. Like anyone, Neji wanted to prove what he'd seen and done was real, and the fact that there was no way he could frustrated him greatly. The lake's antics, which he took as proof that his chakra was being used for something at the very least 'pretty' if not communicative, only got more and more elaborate as time went on. In the beginning it was small and not immediately noticeable; the current changes, the whirlpools. But slowly, it became more and more unmistakable as (at least to Neji's mind) manifestations of some higher presence in the lake trying to tell them something.

What erased the last vestiges of the thought that maybe he _had_ been hallucinating after all was a display three days after his plunge. He had been staring listlessly out of one of the windows in the library, lost in thought, when a shadow passed over his face. Startled out of his daydreams, Neji looked up to see hundreds of huge birds, with wingspans of hundreds of feet, wheeling around the whole area. The library looked out over the lake; and there, he saw the most astonishing thing of all.

White foam wings, rising up out of the surface of the lake, spread their watery pinions, the tips of which reached from one side of the lake to the other. As if to acknowledge him, they pinioned up higher, reaching their tips to the sky as though a gigantic bird under the surface were getting ready to dive. They, and the birds flying around the city, remained until dusk. In a flash of golden light, they vanished, and water rained down from the sky.

---

In the middle of the night following the beautiful aerial display, Neji awoke to Itachi leaning through the door, talking softly to someone. He was still feeling lethargic from the extreme chakra depletion and couldn't get up to look himself. "Itachi…" he murmured, eyes barely cracked enough to see.

The Uchiha looked back over his shoulder suddenly, said a hurried goodbye, and shut the door. "Neji?" he whispered as he crawled back onto the bed and lay down on top of his lover. "What's wrong?"

"Who were you speaking with?"

"Nobody. I heard a noise."

Neji closed his eyes again. When Itachi lied, it was for good reason that he did not want anyone intruding into his business, and so the Hyuuga let it go and went back to sleep.

The next day passed long; Itachi insisted they get back into bed after breakfast, and they spent the day in each other's arms. Toward evening, they both lay in a pleasured haze, so satisfied and content with the world that words would only ruin it. Neji fell asleep wrapped around Itachi, head pillowed on his shoulder, and slept deeply.

In the middle of the night, he felt Itachi get up, but did not feel him return.

---

He ran into Anko alone in the kitchen, eating something that had had water added to it before cooking. "Anko? Have you seen Itachi?"

The tokubetsu jounin's face broke into a huge, sultry grin. "I figured he was with you. He was all yesterday, we could hear everything." She dropped her voice, cartooning his own. "_There, Itachi! Right there—_"

"Enough," he grumbled. "Where is he?"

"Haven't seen him."

Feeling a sense of dread, Neji walked up the stairs to Shizune's lab. There were less random noises from inside than before; in fact, it was eerily silent. Knocking, he was surprised when she opened the door wide with a smile. "Oh, hello Neji, what can I do for you?"

"Itachi. Where is he?"

Something in Shizune's face closed up. "He didn't tell you?"

"No. And it's not like him to just disappear."

"Neji, he… he's gone."

"He'll be back, right?"

Shizune shook her head, the straggly ends of her hair flopping over her shoulders. "No, Neji. He wanted to leave; he tried to write you a note, something to remember him by, but he couldn't. We tested out a device I created."

Neji wanted to cry; he knew he ought to, that it was what he should do, but no tears would come, and he realized that it was better off that way.

"It was painless, Neji. Just a pop, and then he was gone."

The Hyuuga nodded and smiled; indeed, rather than sadness, he felt profound relief, even joy. Itachi, or whoever he truly was, was happier now. "Thank you," he said softly, and went back to his room. He slept and woke up only in midafternoon, after the golden light he'd become so used to getting up with was gone.

---

Naruto burst through the doors of Tsunade's office, face drawn and flushed with anger. She smiled, seeing a redhead's face in him right now.

"Why didn't you tell us?" he shouted at her. "Tsunade _baa-chan_!"

"I'm sorry?" she said, quite calm. Of course, she knew exactly what he was talking about, but with Naruto, it was best to let him shout himself out before trying to talk sense into him at all.

"The team you sent out to get Neji and the others and to bring back Kakashi-sensei's body!" Hinata, looking flushed, and Sasuke came through the door at that point, and that only seemed to fuel Naruto more. "Why weren't Sasuke and I on it? We deserve to be!"

"Why is that?"

"Kakashi was _our fucking teacher_!" Naruto was shaking, and Tsunade could feel the beginnings of something stirring in the room, another force that rustled the papers on her desk. "Neji is our friend!"

Tsunade looked at him sadly, feeling his anguish for her own. She knew well the feeling of being left behind, left out of everything. She'd been feeling it here, in her perch in the Hokage tower, for a long time now. It was time to start training a replacement.

"I know, and that is why I did not send you. I know how you get when you are emotionally charged, Naruto, and I don't want you to hurt other people, or—" she put up a hand to still his outburst, as he looked startlingly like an angry pufferfish at the moment—"Yourself. It would take too long to pick out another candidate for Hokage and train him up."

"Look, Baa-cha—what?" What she'd said had registered with him finally. "Candidate…?"

"For Hokage," she finished briskly. "I can't have my candidates running across the globe and potentially getting hurt. Besides, you wouldn't want it to go to anyone else, would you?"

She gave Sasuke a pointed look; he blanched, and Naruto flushed, but broke out in a grin anyway. Tsunade felt better as she heard him begin to babble excitedly, and had to suppress a laugh as he left the Hokage tower, much more appeased. He was so like his sensei, she thought, and sighed, staring into the depths of her green tea. Jiraiya had been so easily distracted in the same way.

"Hokage-sama?"

She looked up to see Sasuke at the door, questions on his face. "Yes, Sasuke?"

He came back to her desk, standing in front of it and looking every inch the same 12-year-old boy she'd seen in the hospital those years ago. "The report Neji sent back… I heard he said that the lake generates someone from your subconscious."

"That's what Neji said, yes."

His hand had crept up to his chest, above his heart; as she watched, he kept moving it. "Anko-san was on the mission, wasn't she?"

Tsunade could see where this was going, and by the time she answered, Sasuke's hand had made it all the way to his shoulder. "Orochimaru is the person who appeared for her. But Sasuke, it was not your sensei. He had no chakra system, no sense of being—Anko kept him as she would have a pet. He was a being wearing Orochimaru's shape, nothing more."

"If… If I went, would he come?"

Tsunade sighed, getting up and walking around the desk to lean against it and look down at the last Uchiha alive, the one who had harbored hate and attraction in equal measure for her old teammate, and had lived with it in conflict since he'd killed Orochimaru and went off in search of his brother. "Perhaps. But would you really want to see him the way Neji described him? Brainless?" Sasuke shifted, looking away. Tsunade smiled. "I sure as hell wouldn't have wanted to see him like that. I'd rather remember him for the conniving, arrogant asshole he was."

Sasuke sighed, face taking that usual look of practiced indifference he had. "Che. Guess you're right."

"Still hurts, what you had to do, huh?"

"Yeah, it smarts."

"If he weren't dead, I'm sure he'd be amused at your deviousness." Tsunade grinned. "He liked things like that. Now, head off with you."

Sasuke smiled at her, a sidelong one that made her laugh a little, and vanished.

---

On the morning of the third day following Itachi's death, the ANBU team from Konoha arrived. They were not welcome.

Anko knew at once what Neji had said in his report when ANBU ringed her, pushed her against a wall. "Hyuuga!" she screamed glaring daggers at him as they put the chakra-suppressing bracelets on her. "Why did you open your fucking mouth?"

Neji stared at her, sadly. He knew she wouldn't forgive him easily, but he'd had to tell Tsunade anyway. It would have weighed him down even more not to, and it was the only way any of them would be able to return home in any good time. The Hokage knew of his visitor too, and so when the ANBU came to him with the bracelets, he put out his hands and let them lead him away after he'd packed up, having a last look at the room where things had very much changed for him.

The ANBU had wisely made camp five miles from the lake, out of the sphere of the lake's influence. They were heeding his advice as laid down to Tsunade by the letter, and taking no chances. Anko and Shizune were drugged, and Neji interrogated. He answered all their questions, unafraid. He had been here before, but this time things were different. He was changed, reborn almost, his old self already all but forgotten. Nothing affected him anymore.

The next morning, two ANBU left and came back with a small urn, all that remained of Hatake Kakashi. They slipped it into a bag and secured it inside one of their gear packs. Around noon, the captain of the squad came over to Neji and released the bracelets. "We no longer have reason to suspect you still under the hold of the lake, comparable to genjutsu. You are free to go; we leave tomorrow at dawn." Nodding, Neji waited until the captain had gone to focus on other matters, and left the camp.

His feet took him back to the city, past the water runoff where once there had been a dead snake, past the house where part of himself that had been carefully shuttered away was now free. Neji realized he didn't mind so much anymore.

He went east along the lakeshore, coming to a low point. Going right up to the water, he stepped on a rock overhang, looking at the sandy bottom. For a moment, his reflection changed, became that of someone else, and then it was gone. With a smile, Neji reached into the water, submerging his hand entirely. The water brushed over his hand, gentle and caressing, like a lover's fingers on sex-warmed skin.

"It happened to you too."

Neji stood, turning. "Yes, Kiba," he said, looking out over the lake.

"But you're not like them anymore." The other shinobi, his dog beside him, walked up and sat beside Neji on the rock, taking his shoes off and dangling them into the water. "Nah, you've changed."

Neji sat too, mimicking Kiba's movements. "You can tell?"

"It's obvious. You even smell a little different."

They laughed.

"Yes, I've changed, Kiba." Neji pulled his feet up. "So did you leave the base because you didn't want to have a visitor?"

"Actually, I was the only one that didn't." Kiba laughed. "And I've been wandering around in the forest ever since I left, trying to figure that one out. Near as I can tell, it's because I don't have anything to hide. I let it all out and don't keep anything inside like the rest of you, I guess—no offense meant—"

"No, it's understandable." Neji thought about this explanation and nodded. "I think you're right."

"Might as well write it in a scroll and put it in a library." Kiba laughed. "Though I don't think anyone will be visiting this lake in a really long time."

"I hope not," Neji said. It was calm on the surface, but underneath, he knew the currents were churning. "There's a team of ANBU five miles south of the lake. We're leaving tomorrow morning."

"I'll be there." Kiba grinned.

---

The day they came home, the dawn was golden. Neji woke with a start and sat up, staring at it in something like fear. But it was gone in a moment, and he got up and helped the ANBU squad erase all traces of the camp. Three hours later they were in Konoha.

---

"And that's everything?"

Neji nodded. "That is an accurate record of events from my last report to you up until the day I left with the ANBU squad."

Tsunade had before her a written report, her notes on Neji's oral report, and the recording scrolls he had from Kakashi (he'd found it while packing, tucked away between two books on the shelf he hadn't thought to look at) and the one he had worn when they had gone out on the lake. "You realize how this is going to sound to the Elder council?"

"I know. But it is the truth."

"You would not lie." Tsunade smiled. "And if you were to lie, I can think of a dozen other things you would have rather written about than this." She leaned forward. "Was it painful, to see him again?"

"Yes." A brief crack in Neji's calm, the barest flicker of a wound that, while it was healing, was still a vulnerable scab. "Even though it was not Uchiha Itachi per se, but a being created by the lake and my own subconscious, it was emotionally wracking." Neji looked up, a sudden smile reaching the corners of his mouth. "Hokage-sama, I have one more request."

"Yes?"

"I wish to be put back on the active duty roster and allowed on long-distance missions again."

Tsunade raised a blonde eyebrow. "Why the change of heart?"

The smile on the Hyuuga's face turned secretive. "There's still some work to be done."

---

"You don't believe him, do you?"

Tsunade leaned back against the chair, glaring at the paperwork on her desk for a moment before turning her gaze again to two of the five Elders assembled before her. It was such a bother to have your assistant out on psychological leave.

"Of course I believe him. Why would I not?"

"His story is, frankly, fantastic. A lake that conjures images of past lovers, past friends? Ridiculous."

"Flesh-and-blood summoning is not unheard of," she said drolly. "Nonetheless, I am sending messages to the other Kages. We are going to cordon the area around the lake for a distance of ten miles. And ye of little faith, maybe you would be interested to reexamine what Neji brought back with him?" She pushed the box containing two Akatsuki coats (both with no visible fastening or opening), the reports, and the recording scrolls toward them. "I find the recording scroll he took with him onto the lake rather interesting, myself."

"And why is that? It recorded nothing but their voices at the beginning, and then silence."

"The silence is very interesting, Councilors, because the scroll records silence almost to its limit of twenty-four hours. At the very end is the sound of a great breath being drawn, and shouts from Tsunade, Anko, and someone we can only presume to be the conjuration of Uchiha Itachi."

She grinned at them and stood. "I am going to retire for the night. Any questions may be submitted to Haruno Sakura, or the Hokage-elect, Uzumaki Naruto."

"There are doubts concerning his appointment, as well, Lady Tsunade."

"As I knew there would be. But that is the prerogative of the Hokage."

"The rest of the Council will never believe the Hyuuga's story."

"I don't care what the Council thinks." She tilted her chin up proudly. "I, for one, believe him." And on that note she turned on her heel and walked out of the room. She was smiling.


End file.
